


Floriography

by xLion_Heartx



Series: Blooming [1]
Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Amy Lives (Walking Dead), Anxiety, Flashbacks, Found Family, Gen, Kids in the apocalypse, Messing with the rules of the infection, OCs for plot - Freeform, POV Multiple, POV Third Person Limited, Panic Attacks, Past Child Abuse, Past Domestic Violence, Sophia Peletier Lives, Sophia-Centric, Trauma, herbal medicine
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-11-09
Packaged: 2021-03-05 21:35:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 39,935
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25672189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xLion_Heartx/pseuds/xLion_Heartx
Summary: “Floriography (noun) • The language of flowers”She grew up with oleander around her words and dead leaves lining her walls. Now there’s wolfsbane in the streets outside and monsters worse than her dad lingering in the roots of everything.~•~OR: The world ends and Sophia gets separated from her mom. In the new world, she learns what she can with a book of flowers under her arm and a heaping helping of habits created by her father.
Relationships: Carl Grimes & Rick Grimes, Carl Grimes & Shane Walsh, Carl Grimes & Sophia Peletier, Carol Peletier & Glenn Rhee, Carol Peletier & Sophia Peletier, Daryl Dixon & Carol Peletier, Daryl Dixon & Glenn Rhee, Daryl Dixon & Sophia Peletier, Glenn Rhee & Sophia Peletier, Lori Grimes/Rick Grimes, Maggie Greene/Glenn Rhee, Rick Grimes & Shane Walsh
Series: Blooming [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1861504
Comments: 42
Kudos: 30





	1. Narcissus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Narcissus (Daffodil) • Flower of rebirth and new beginnings”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is a full rewrite of a fic called “The Death Of Innocence” (I’m doing a lot of rewrites lately lmao) which I low-key abandoned a little while ago - lots of things have changed, but certain elements remain the same so it really doesn’t matter.
> 
> Anyway~! Welcome to this fic where all the chapters are named after flowers because I didn’t do all this research for nothing ! We’re starting off with my birth month flower and I hope you enjoy ^^

_These cheerful flowers are among the earliest blooms to poke through the frozen soil in early spring. Heralding the warming to come, these flowers remind us that no winter freeze can last forever; Narcissus symbolises rebirth and renewal. They symbolise a new beginning._

* * *

“Merle, I swear to god, let go or we’re going to drive off this damn cliff and we’ll lose that precious bike of yours _along_ with our lives.”

Sophia looks up from the book in her lap, nudging the headphones off one ear and eyeing the men occupying the front seats. They’ve been arguing this whole time, mostly empty threats thrown at one another every time there had been even a beat of silence.

Glenn’s driving, because Daryl had done it all of last night and no one trusts Merle, in the front passenger seat, to do anything that requires perfect coordination - not with his stash hidden somewhere in the bags he’d thrown in the back of the truck with his motorcycle. Daryl’s now in the back with her, eyebrows pinched in a way that tells her he’d woken up at some point since this new argument started but wasn’t quite ready to defuse anything yet.

“Maybe if ya’d let me drive in the first place, ya-“

Glenn smacks Merle’s hand away from the wheel, cutting the man’s retort short before it can get anywhere close to crude or racist like everything else he seems to say.

Her eyes flit between the other occupants of the car and the road stretching out in front of them. She isn’t quite sure how high they are, but she’s positive it won’t matter if Merle keeps snarling like he is; Glenn isn’t exactly the murderous type, but the older Dixon is about as careful with his words as her dad was, and it’s an established fact nobody but Daryl can stand being alone with him for more than ten minutes.

While she remembers to, she slips a pressed leaf back between the pages of her book and drops it closed. The slam stops Merle’s growling, and pulls Daryl out of his attempt at getting back to sleep, the latter offering her a tired smile as she shoves the book into the backpack in her footwell.

The problem with Merle not growling, though, is that he opens his mouth to say something again, though Glenn inhales sharply and turns his attention off the straight shot road to glare at him.

“Merle I’m not having another argument with you, okay?” He pauses to gesture to the backseat. “Your brother is trying to sleep and we’ve already tried talking out our issues with one another but you don’t exactly pay attention. Now can I _please_ focus-“

“Is that a person?” The words slip from her mouth before she even finishes registering just what she’s seeing.

But she isn’t wrong, up the road is someone standing on the hood of a car with a shotgun in hand. Glenn’s eyes flash forward and he slams on the brakes, the abrupt stop is enough to painfully jerk the four of them (and this is why she made sure everyone put their seatbelts on).

They sit there for a moment, Daryl gesturing gently for her to hide behind Glenn’s seat, she unbuckles her seatbelt and shifts on instinct, because when Daryl tells her to get down she’s supposed to - especially in the face of a man with a gun. She pulls her headphones back on too, they don’t block out everything, but they muffle enough.

She watches with wide eyes as Daryl slips out of the car, shoving Merle’s face back into the car when he sticks it out to take a look, and grabbing his crossbow from the back of the truck. Glenn snatches Merle’s handgun from where it sits precariously on the central console and bolts from the car before anything can be said about it.

Her gaze darts up to the man left with her, his attention on the conversation happening outside. His eyes are hard, but hard in the way he gets when he’s worried about Daryl or wary of a situation in general; the silence has her shoulders hiking up to her covered ears but she doesn’t dare move the headphones for fear of what she might hear if she does. If she stays quiet she’ll be fine.

~ • ~

She remembered to bring a flashlight, she remembered to bring headphones, last time she had neither and had sat in the darkness of her closet listening to yelling for hours with nothing but her own shaking and thoughts to torment her.

The screaming isn’t much better, but the headphones make it sound less sharp, less stinging against her eardrums; her mom yells so softly she can barely hear her, and Sophia’s okay with that, hearing her mom yell is never a good thing.

The flashlight is a small one, and it has one of those wrist straps so she can hook it on a hangar and let the light fill the confined space. She’d been claustrophobic once, but a fear like that could only last so long before others took over.

There’s a stack of books in the corner, hidden underneath a pile of old coats she doesn’t wear anymore; her dad knows she hides in here, but he doesn’t need to know she tries to ignore him in here too - if he did they’d have another bonfire and she wouldn’t be able to have an allowance for the next year. Probably longer.

On top of the pile is a book a friend from school had given her around her last birthday, she’d had to sneak it into her room with everything else she’d been gifted and, while that wasn’t much, getting anything past her dad was, _is_... difficult.

The book is about flowers, it’s thick, illustrated with a font a little bigger than a normal book. It’s something that’ll take her a few months to read if her closet hideaways continue to be as frequent as this month’s have been. She never did get to finish the last book she was reading, her mom having to return it to the library without renewing it because she’d had a bruise the size of mars on her cheek and couldn’t say she actually hadn’t gotten to the end of it.

Sophia likes flowers, Daryl’s been teaching her how to find good ones in the woods near her neighbourhood, and Glenn started teaching her how to draw them the last time she and her mom stayed in Atlanta. She stares at the pressed buttercups tucked between the pages, wondering what they might be doing right now, wondering if Daryl won’t be able to visit after this fight is over - she hopes her mom likes Daryl more than she loves her dad, because Sophia knows _she_ does.

Something shatters in the kitchen and she hopes it isn’t the mug she’d given her mom for Mother’s Day. She sniffles, swiping her sleeve over her eyes and under her nose and trying to pretend her knuckles aren’t white around yellowing pages.

Her mom doesn’t come knocking on the closet door until Sophia’s nearly falling asleep amidst her clothes. Her mom’s wrist is bruised, she’s careful with it when she reaches for Sophia, and there’s a bandage peeking out from the sleeve of a cardigan she hadn’t been wearing before; there’s droplets of red seeping through it.

Sophia learned not to ask questions a long time ago, her mom wouldn’t tell her anyway. She knows the bruise meant her mom would have a cast by the time Sophia got home from school tomorrow, and she also knows that they’ll both sleep in Sophia’s room tonight, in the tiny bed barely big enough for Sophia anymore.

~ • ~

She exhales, tucking herself further into the sweater Glenn had shoddily sewn together a over a week ago; all of her jumpers had been in a house they couldn’t go back to, and Daryl and Glenn had wanted something that she could wear even with it being as hot as it is - at least until her arms heal a bit more. The main body is a deep blue and isn’t much bigger than she needs it to be, then the arms are two different lengths _and_ colours: the left is burgundy and about a hand’s length longer than her whole arm, meanwhile the right is some faded yellow and hangs all the way down to her knees.

Her jeans are rolled up at her ankles and have tears through the knees, her sneakers two different colours with one having zip ties as shoe laces. Her backpack is raggedy, one of the straps held together by layers of duct tape she’d scribbled over with black sharpie to make it less shiny in the dark; she’d managed to wash her hair in the last week, Daryl pouring a few cold bottles of water over her head and untangling some unruly knots as carefully as he could with his hands.

She can sit happily knowing she doesn’t look the messiest out of their group, that award goes to Merle.

Her attention goes to the older Dixon when he shifts in the front seat, he’s chewing on his thumbnail - a habit she’s noticed Daryl has too - and Glenn’s coming back towards the car, gun shoved in the back pocket of his jeans and shifting his baseball cap against the midday sun. He passes Merle’s window, ignoring whatever he grumbles under his breath, and pulling open the back door opposite Sophia; she pulls her headphones down around her neck, tucking hair behind her ear and probably looking like a deer in headlights.

Glenn extends his hand, wiggling his fingers in the way he did when he wanted her to take it, and smiling easily at her, “c’mon, he’s not as scary as he looked.”

She clambers across the seats, pushing her shorter sleeve up to grab his hand and stumble out of the footwell onto the road. Shotgun man stands opposite Daryl by a jeep, both men with their weapons held in one hand at their sides, shotgun man has a mop of black hair on his head and a solid stance; he seems surprised by her appearance, expression one of both caution and shock.

“You have a kid.”

“We were- ah- we were babysitting,” Glenn stutters, squeezing her hand even as she shields slightly behind his legs.

Shotgun man doesn’t move any closer, but he tugs his trousers up and crouches down where he stands, addressing her, “hey, kiddo,” he smiles, its nice, she’s reminded of her softball coach. He presses a hand to the spot over his heart, “I’m Shane. What’s your name?”

“Sophia,” she replies, holding back from hiding her face behind her long sleeve. She squeezes Glenn’s hand and looks over to Daryl before addressing Shane again, “they really were babysitting me, by the way. Um, my mom was in the hospital.” She says the last bit almost entirely into her sleeve but he seems to hear her anyway.

His eyes are soft until he straightens and turns back to face Daryl, “we got a couple other families up at our camp, kids her age, you could come and stay with us.”

Daryl hums, crossbow tapping against the side of his leg, “safety?”

“Pretty damn good, haven’t had a walker show its ugly mug since we got up here, and there’s a wood up there too.”

Daryl mumbles something to himself then holds up his free hand to Shane and crosses over to her and Glenn, planting his hand between Glenn’s shoulders and leading them a little ways away, back towards the car where Merle’s still sits.

“We could just check it out?” Glenn says when they’re far enough away, sparing a look down at her then the truck, “we’re bound to run out of fuel eventually and that bike can’t carry all four of us.”

“If it’s not safe we can go someplace else?” She offers, shrugging somewhat helplessly, she isn’t sure where else they could go but Daryl’s smart, he’d figure it out.

Daryl eyes his brother, tapping his crossbow against his leg again - if he keeps that up it’ll bruise - “Merle don’t get along with other folk.”

“Yes I’ve noticed,” Glenn deadpans before reaching out and resting a hand against Daryl’s shoulder, “look, the least we can do is stay there for a couple days, get some real sleep. If we hate it we can leave during a sunrise or something.”

Sophia bounces on her heels, “the truck seats are a little...”

“Solid?” Daryl supplies, sighing and rubbing his neck when she nods, “alright, we can-“

“Are y’all havin’ a meetin’ without me?” Merle’s halfway out the passenger seat when he calls out and Sophia can’t help but giggle when Glenn groans.

Daryl swings his crossbow back onto his shoulder, jutting his head in Shane’s direction as he storms across to the car, vaguely threatening Merle’s stash if he doesn’t stay in the car, and wrestling him back into the passenger seat like an exasperated mother. Shane’s watching the pair in something akin to amusement before his attention turns back to Glenn and Sophia, wandering back over to him.

Glenn gestures vaguely with the hand still wrapped around Sophia’s, “sorry about him. Daryl’s brother, we couldn’t exactly leave him in town.”

“S’long as he stays outta trouble we won’t have any issues.”

“We’ll keep an eye on him where we can.”

Glenn sends her back to the car when she starts bouncing on her heels again, sticking around by Shane as the other man explains just about where the quarry camp is and roughly how long it’ll take to reach it from where they are now (which really isn’t that long).

Daryl’s back in the driver’s seat, massaging the bridge of his nose as Merle rambles on about how they shouldn’t be making decisions without him. She hops back into her seat, shuffling over - careful of the crossbow now in the middle of the backseat - to poke her head between the two front seats and catch Daryl’s attention.

“Merle’s not allowed to cause any issues or we might not be allowed to stay in camp.”

“I will be on my best behaviour.”

He’s lying.

* * *

Merle’s fallen asleep by the time they get up to the quarry camp, cheek pressed into his fist and snoring filling the car as Daryl manoeuvres the truck into the clearing behind the Jeep, pulling in behind an RV.

Sophia eyes the camp from her window, there’s tents dotted around on the expanse of gravel, pits for fire dug out on one side of the cliff, and a couple other cars parked just in front of the RV that seems to be the main point of the camp - she notices a lawn chair and an umbrella positioned on top of it facing off the cliff, that must’ve been how Shane came down to meet them on the road. There’s a few plastic crates scattered around, many appearing to work as tables if the books and papers thrown on top tell her anything, and there’s some clothing lines tied between the few trees in the main camp that aren’t near the woods behind it.

She watches Shane exit his jeep, coming over as Daryl rolls the window down and leaning against the roof and gesturing across camp with his shotgun, “most of ‘em are down in the quarry doing laundry, kids’ll be over by the tree line probably.” He pauses for a second to wave at an old man with a bucket hat, “y’all can get acquainted when we’ve decided where you’ll camp, Dale has a couple tents to spare, I’m sure.”

Daryl nods, watching Shane head over to bucket hat man - Dale, she guesses - and begin talking. He tears at the skin of his thumb as he scans the woods and the camp with varying levels of intrigue. Eventually, he looks away and unbuckles his seatbelt, turning to look back at her and Glenn, he reaches between them for his crossbow before pointing at her.

“Have a look around, come runnin’ if ya think somethin’s not right.” She goes to open her door but he catches the edge of her sleeve, “and if I call fer ya it’s cause we need ya fer decisions.”

She purses her lips and nods, slipping from the car and playing with a loose thread on the inside of her sleeve with her fingers. She follows a small trail scuffed into the gravel by other people, mapping out some sort of daily routine in her head from the snaking paths leading out of tents to the RV, the fire pits, the tree line and the incline from the quarry where most of the other people are.

She hears some laughing and looks up from her ratty shoes, there’s a trio of kids by a small grouping of trees and a giant pile of rocks and gravel; two boys, one girl, all of varying but similar ages and dressed far less... mismatched than she is.

The girl is on the gravel pile and appears the youngest - maybe an eight to Sophia’s twelve - she’s holding a stick like a wand with one hand, and pressing a doll to her chest with the other, calling out to the boys below her. One of them looks to be the girl’s brother, still younger than Sophia but older than the girl - like, ten? - he’s got a towel tied around his shoulders; he’s holding a bigger stick in two hands like a sword, pointing it at the girl and declaring something about saving a ‘fair maiden’ like he’s reading from a storybook.

The final boy is probably her age, he’s dressed in plaid with jeans covered in mud and tears not dissimilar to hers. He’s hanging from a tree branch by both hands, one of his sneakers (matching and _not_ held together by zip ties) almost falling off his foot; he keeps trying to toe it back on when it slips away from his heel. He’s cheering on the younger boy, telling him to ‘kick her butt‘ and shaking leaves down around him each time he swings on the branch.

He looks over while she’s staring, eyebrows knitting together in confusion, he stops swinging and shifts, throwing his elbow over the branch to free up one of his hands to wave at her slowly, as if she wasn’t real. She pushes her sleeve up to wave back, mouth quirking upwards when his eyes light up; he finally loses that shoe, and their eye contact is broken as he scrambles to catch it and not fall flat on his face.

But things can’t be perfect.

“Well lookit who decided to show up.”

Her blood runs cold, her lungs stuttering as she whips around, stumbling backwards away from the voice, away from her _dad_. He looks taller, maybe it’s the slight weight loss, maybe it’s because she hasn’t seen him in almost a month, but he’s bigger, bigger than her, and his eyes are hard, dancing with something she’s never been able to describe but always known to be afraid of.

For the first time, she runs.

She’s not far from the car, and she darts around the back of the RV to get to the passenger side without anybody seeing her. Her breath is coming out in unsteady huffs, her hands are shaking from where they’re hidden in her sleeves, and she’s almost surprised she actually makes it to the car.

She climbs into the backseat, almost sprawling out in the footwell as she pulls the door closed. She rubs her sleeves over her face, willing the tears to just stop, but all she can think about is how much her arms hurt and how everything else is going to hurt when he gets anywhere near her. Because he will, because Daryl and Glenn don’t have to look after her anymore, the only reason they were in the first place was because she asked them to, it has to be, and now they can leave her with him and get on with actually surviving and not constantly looking over their shoulder to make sure she isn’t being an _idiot_ or close to getting herself killed.

She sucks in air but she knows it’s too quick.

She scrambles for her backpack, left in the drivers side footwell, dragging it up and onto the seats and over to her side. It’s in the front pocket, she knows it is- _there_ -

She should’ve been wearing it, but she’d taken it off when they washed her hair and forgot to put it back on because everything was _fine_ and she was stupid because she actually thought that it might stay that way. But even if her dad hadn’t appeared out of nowhere, a geek probably would have-

She presses the bracelet into her hands, the four wooden beads Daryl had carved digging into her palms and the threads Glenn had tied together sliding between her fingers.

Four beads. Four seconds.

She rolls the bracelet across her arm, inhaling and holding it as she traces the shapes in the beads. The design is small, but she can tell even with her eyes closed that it’s an eschscholzia flower, a California poppy; the carvings made from a drawing she did, a drawing with a scribbled _peace_ in the corner.

She focuses on that, the drawing, the word, the memories of sitting against lamplight watching Daryl work the knife into the wood, giggling when he and Glenn were arguing about the best way to tie everything together, Glenn inevitably slapping Daryl’s hands away.

She sniffles, breath deeper, more controlled.

She wipes her stray tears with her sleeve, pulling her legs in and resting her left arm next to her backpack, the bracelet underneath her wrist. She fiddles with the threads, crossing them over and pulling them with her teeth, knotting it. That won’t be coming off unless she cuts it, that’s for sure. She stares at it, chin against the seats and taking a few more deep breaths as her hands stop shaking; her arms, they still burn a little.

She looks up when there’s a knock on the window, breath hitching until she sees it’s just Daryl. She tucks her legs under her chin and watches through her lashes as he dumps his crossbow in the truck bed and pulls open the door. He doesn’t fit in the footwell as easily as she does, but he squishes in, one leg pulled up like hers and the other stretching out so his foot rests just beside her.

They don’t look at each other for a good minute, Sophia toying with the thread inside her sleeve again while Daryl picks at the skin on his hand.

“Nearly gave me a heart attack, girl,” he says, attention flicking up to her finally, “lucky Merle knew where you were.”

“Sorry,” she mumbles, mouth pressed against her knees and shoulders up to her ears, she doesn’t want him to be mad.

He scrunches up his nose, “naw don’t be, m’always worried about ya, ain’t yer fault.” A pause. “Y’saw Ed then?”

She winces, nodding once and pressing the beads into her palm again, “I know I should be happy cause its my dad and you’ll be fine cause you don’t have to babysit me anymore but-“

“Hey,” he taps his foot against her leg, looking at her seriously, “what’d I tell ya when this started?”

“You’ll get me back to my mom,” she swallows, swiping her sleeve under her nose, “no matter how long that takes.”

He nods, “Yeah, yer _mom_ , didn’t say nothin’ about him.” There’s a beat, Sophia’s breath evening out because he isn’t going to leave her. He tilts his head, “do you wanna go back with him?”

“No.”

“Then I ain’t gonna make ya.”

The noises from outside grow louder, Merle’s apparently taken to greeting the people coming up from the quarry and Glenn sounds like he’s on the man’s heels. Daryl’s head lolls into his hand after one of Glenn’s many apologies, mumbling a curse into his palm.

“Sounds like a mess out there. Y’alright if I tell Shane what’s up?”

She sucks a breath between her teeth. Someone has to know, and people might figure it out eventually, but- “just him, an- and no details.”

“Course not.” He nudges her with his foot again, winking when the familiar squeals of those other kids sounds from outside, “now c’mon, kids wanna meet ya.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you’d like to interact with me !
> 
> My Twitter ~ https://twitter.com/_solarheart_  
> My CC ~ https://curiouscat.qa/_solarheart_  
> My Ko-fi ~ https://ko-fi.com/bambean


	2. Helianthus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Helianthus (Sunflower) • Flower of friendship and close bonds"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y I K E S  
> So I did not mean for this chapter to take so long to come out... but if you haven't noticed how long it is, yeah ^^;  
> Life also happened, I'm living in uni accommodation now, so, alone for the first time and I'm trying to a d u l t before any of my classes start next week soooo:
> 
> Idk how long the next chapter is going to take, we're rolling into canon now so I have sources to work off of which can make chapters write themselves a lot faster, but I'm also working around classes, clubs, and all that so a lot of my writing will get pigeon-holed into certain timeslots or just quick bursts where I can yk ~ either way, everyone just keep that in mind between now and the next chapter if it takes a bit of a minute to come out <3

_Sunflowers are truly a flower of friendship. Yellow flowers are an ideal gift to reflect a close bond between friends, in the case of sunflowers, this is doubly so with the flowers not only reflecting strong bonds between friends and lovers but also family too._

* * *

Sophia stays in the car as Daryl goes to talk to Shane, twisting her bracelet around her wrist to feel the beads press into her bones. Glenn passes by the window at one point, smiling in like nothing happened, like she isn't hiding from the most terrifying person she's ever had the displeasure of being connected to… but Glenn smiling is good, it always has been, he-he's light like that, a small beacon in her life.

He passes to get to the back of the truck where half their stuff is tied down around the motorcycle, tugging and pulling at bags she knows she wrested pillows and blankets in the night before they'd left the last place they stayed. She figures he must be setting up whatever tents they've been given; she'll be with him, she knows, because if he were with Merle, one of them would throttle the other in the middle of the night and Sophia doesn't think she'd even be slightly surprised.

There's a tap on the window behind her, light and fleeting, and she cranes her neck to look back; it's the boy from before, the one hanging from the tree with his shoes almost falling off. His eyes and the tip of his nose are peeking over the bottom of the window despite the fact he's probably tall enough just to stand there and look in properly. She eyes him curiously, is he trying to hide or something?

He holds up a buttercup like a peace offering and her lip quirks upwards unexpectedly - his eyes crinkle.

She finally pulls herself out of the footwell, the boy straightening out at the same time, he was tall enough to simply look through the window… but he didn't. She pushes her bag to the side and sits in the actual seat, she swings the door open and stretches her legs out, staying sat but less curled up than she had been.

He's standing there with the buttercup in one hand and the sticks the other two kids had been playing with in the other, toeing at the ground and watching her.

"Hi," she says dumbly, slow with a hint of awkwardness that kind of makes her want to close the car door again from sheer embarrassment alone. How long has it been since she's spoken to someone her age? _Too long_.

The boy smiles, unaware of her inner turmoil, "hi!" He falters for a second, looking down at his occupied hands before stretching the one with the buttercup out and offering it to her properly, "I'm Carl."

She takes the small flower, twisting the stem between her fingers before reaching behind her and pulling her book into her lap, "I'm Sophia," she says in return, a small smile returning to her face as she flips open to a random page and slips the flower inside.

Now she won't lose it.

Carl bounces on his heels, watching her quietly and digging one of the sticks into the dirt by his feet and tracing lines and shapes in the shifting earth.

"You disappeared really fast back there," he broaches after a moment, biting the inside of his cheek, "I kind of thought I made you up for a minute."

She grimaces, "sorry."

He shakes his head, "don't be, I'd run from Ed too, he's big _and_ ugly, not to mention scary," his brain seems to catch up with mouth and he hisses through his teeth, "don't tell my mom I said that, she thinks we have to be nice just 'cause he came here after losing his wife and kid or something."

A startled giggle escapes her, no one has ever really described her dad as ugly being the worst thing about him; she's heard people use bigger words, different words, but Carl's fit.

Tapping her heel against the edge of the car, she bites her lip, "he, um, he's my dad." She looks up at him to see his cheeks go red to accompany an embarrassed wince, she cuts him off when he opens his mouth, "but you're right… he is big and ugly and scary. He's mean too," she shrugs, " _really_ mean."

"Oh," Carl's shoulders slump, he digs the longer stick into the dirt again, toeing the soil with his put-together sneakers, "if my dad were here he could deal with him, he and Shane handled really mean people a lot, before…" he trails off, shrugging a little helplessly before inhaling a deep breath and turning his attention down to her shoes, "do you… want some different sneakers?"

She looks at them too, the zip ties keeping the fraying material together, and nods wordlessly.

(Daryl will see her in a couple hours, cross-legged by the treeline with matching shoes that have actual laces, her book in her lap and a juicebox in her hand. Carl will be on one side loudly complaining about a maths problem sheet his mom gave him not five minutes before, and the other kids - Louis and Eliza - will be on her other scratching drawings into the dirt with pencil-sized sticks, occasionally holding up a flower or something green and asking her what it is. In a couple hours Daryl will feel a little better about being at this camp.)

* * *

After the first day she spends her time split between staying with Daryl and Glenn, and playing with Carl and the other kids. Shane smiles at her when he can, and her dad keeps himself away, she learns the names of most of the others in the camp slowly and even though they often flash looks between her, her dad, and Daryl. 

She isn't sure what they're thinking, but she is sure that she doesn't want to know.

Daryl goes hunting at his first opportunity, disappearing into the woodland without so much as a word and coming back by sundown with a line of squirrels and scrawny birds. Some of the others look somewhere between disgusted and concerned, especially when Sophia slots herself between Daryl and Glenn to skin one of the squirrels under Daryl's usual instruction.

She remembers the first time she had to do it the first couple days after Atlanta got bombed, she'd just about thrown up and Daryl had reiterated through the whole ordeal that he'd rather she didn't have to do this, but with it initially just being the two of them, she never got much of a choice. 

She's better at it now, less likely to nearly cut her finger off and way less queasy. She still tends to feel bad, especially for the smaller ones, the runts, but she's gotten good at pushing that aside until after she's finished. Thinking about it just distracts her.

Carl watches her, almost with stars in his eyes, while his mother tries to keep him focused on whatever lesson she'd forced him into, Sophia throws him a little smile and does some of her movements a little slower in case he wants to learn the motions for later. If Daryl notices he doesn't say anything.

A day later she manages to sneak Carl into a lesson about traps since Daryl wants to make some and Merle is too out of it to be of any use and Glenn is busy talking to Shane about how viable finding supplies in Atlanta would be, so he barely gives a quirk of his brow before shifting to give some more space for the both of them to settle in the dirt.

He walks them through the knots and the rudimentary mechanisms, corrects them where he needs to and encourages them where he can. Sophia thinks Carl's turn out the best, but he'd spent a lot of time squinting at the same knot on all of them so she technically makes more; either way, Daryl gives a solid nod and disappears back into the woods to set them up before Mrs Grimes finds them, no evidence of their less-than-kid-like activities in sight.

She still eyes their dirty hands though.

* * *

Sophia doesn’t think she’s had many instances of real disappointment. Sure, she’s been upset about not being able to do things, or things she owned getting broken or given away ~~usually without her knowledge~~ , but by the time she was anywhere close to the age she was competent enough to know what was happening, she expected it. Her mom never explicitly raised Sophia to anticipate losing her stuff when her dad was angry, or drunk, or in any other mood besides content, but some things… some things she picked up on her own.

So, looking down at the crude chalk sketchings Eliza and Louis had drawn on the concrete at her feet, she somehow can’t stop herself from remembering a time she lost something she didn’t expect to. Looking back, it was sort of a stupid thing to get upset about, but it was also the one thing she made friends with whenever she and her mom went to Atlanta.

It was just this piece of wall, uncovered and exposing brickwork, in one of the open living areas of the safe house, leftover from former renovations if she had to guess. Honestly, it was out of place by most stretches of the imagination, awkwardly situated with a plant on one side of it as if that’d cover up the fact it was just left there.

Someone, she thinks maybe Devon, had brought chalks one day, just a box of thick sticks with the dust already covering the cardboard - not unlike the forgotten box by the drawing with her now. He’d come into the living space while most of their moms were doing something and boldly proclaimed they were going to make that _ugly ass wall_ (little Suzy in the corner had squeaked at the language, which made it a little funnier) and dragged any and all of them with enough hand-eye coordination to draw whatever the hell they felt like on this wall. Sophia thinks she tried to draw roses, she’s not sure how old she was at the time, but she’s pretty positive they looked a bit awkward.

She remembers their group of artists, sometimes new people would join, others would leave (she was one of the serial offenders of leaving for a few months, sometimes a year, and popping back up), but at least once a week they’d group together to add more scribbles onto the bricks, eventually stretching around to the side the plant had been covering and for Devon to have to get a new box of chalk.

They’d removed it, none of them know why, most of them don’t even know when, but one day she’d wandered into the living space and it wasn’t there anymore, just an even more awkward patch of flooring and a floating plant with no wall.

She’d cried. It was weird but she had, she still wonders if anybody else did. In reality it really was just a wall, and if they’d wanted to throw chalk on something, someone could have got them actual boards, but the wall… it was important. It was displaced and lost, people didn’t want it but (for a while) they couldn’t do anything about it, just like a lot of them, constantly running away with one parent, sometimes not even able to go anywhere for _years_. In some way that wall was one of them, it was a friend in whatever sense of the word allowed for walls a bunch of children tried to make pretty so it could fit in like they so desperately wanted to, and one day it wasn’t there anymore.

That memory crops up the same day Glenn takes off to Atlanta.

* * *

She sits with Carl again, the shoes he'd given her double-laced, and one of her better-fitting sweaters covering her arms with a shade of purple she's always liked a lot. Carl is listening to his mom give a makeshift class on maths - Sophia doesn't really know _why_ she's doing it, nor why she'd looked so offended when Sophia had asked her earlier upon Mrs Grimes approaching her about it - she'd only actually come along because Carl had looked so bored when she'd wandered by earlier, and now every time Mrs Grimes isn't looking they play tic-tac-toe in the dirt between their knees.

Daryl appears from their side of camp, his crossbow slung over his shoulder and a brown windbreaker gripped in one hand; her eyes light up, the jacket was something stuffed at the bottom of Daryl's drawers back at his place, he'd given it to her back before even Glenn had tracked them down.

"Going hunting?" Dale calls from the RV, drawing the others' attention towards him.

He glares a little, but hums in return, turning to look over and wave the jacket at her, "come on."

She springs to her feet and dashes over, Mrs Grimes looks downright alarmed as she shrugs the jacket on and pats down the pockets, pulling out her headband and sliding it onto her head to keep her hair away from her eyes.

"You're taking her _hunting_?"

"Better than anythin' y'all are doin'," he grumbles, loud enough for them to hear, "'sides, I ain't leavin' 'er 'ere with Glenn out in Atlanta."

Amy frowns, but she doesn't look that upset about his words, "we'd look after her."

Daryl snorts, chewing on the skin of his thumb and lifting the hood of the windbreaker over Sophia's head, "I barely know y'all."

"Can I go?" Carl asks, already side-eyeing his mom like he knows the next thing she's about to say.

" _Absolutely not_."

He rolls his eyes but doesn't say anything else.

Shane approaches them before they cross the treeline, hands on his hips and a serious yet slightly-amused gleam in his eye, "y'all gonna be back before sundown?"

"Prolly," Daryl nods, rolling his shoulder with the weight of his crossbow, "checkin' the traps, see if I can't track somethin' bigger."

The former officer nods easily, "you find trouble, you holler for someone, yeah?"

Sophia bounces up onto her toes, "I'll come running."

"Yeah she will." Daryl's lip quirks upwards and he pinches the back of her neck right where it tickles, she squirms trapping his hand with her shoulders and making Shane laugh, running a hand through his hair.

She hasn't been too far past the treeline since they got here, she's wanted to, but she always feels better playing in places she's explored with Daryl first, so, this trip will probably double as that. 

She looks around, noting certain bushes, and hopping over exposed roots before she can trip over them; her knife is in her hand, blade folded away but easy enough to flip outwards in her established grip over her trying to fumble with it should some threat expose itself, Daryl's crossbow is at his side in one hand, ready to be raised at even the smallest rustle. 

He'd grabbed a bag before they left camp, it hangs off his shoulders now, holding enough room for whatever game they get, but also holding the lunch they'll inevitably eat later - if Daryl were by himself he'd either eat of the squirrels he'd caught or not eat at all, but he tends to have better habits when she's with him.

The traps closest to their camp remain empty, undisturbed and still hidden, a lot of the wildlife are probably hyperaware of the people invading their space, they're avoiding it as much as possible which is smart, logical, Sophia sometimes wonders how they feel about the whole geeks thing, wonders how many have been caught off guard and grabbed only to get eaten raw, alive. 

She winces, shaking her head to rid herself of the images she's starting to create.

They're quiet, making as little noise and as little conversation as they can be, Merle had made a comment once about how silent Sophia could be, and it was the first time she ever really noticed that she didn't tend to make much noise moving anywhere. Daryl and Glenn had noticed years ago, of course they had, but they'd never mentioned it. Either way, her quietness has been useful, other kids couldn't control their volume to save their lives - literally now - but Daryl had never had to chastise her for being too loud, sometimes he's actively told her to speak up and that's a weird thing for Sophia even now, after years of just not really being allowed to be loud.

The first trap they come to that actually has something - a rabbit - caught in it, Daryl crouches down to show her how to properly empty and reset it. He goes through the motions slowly, making sure she's paying attention because she may have learned how to skin animals, but the first few places they stayed there wasn't really anywhere for traps to go, Daryl tended to just shoot what he could when he could and they'd deal with things as and when they appeared. 

Nonetheless, after that he lets her untangle the next one, watching her just like when she made the traps in the first place, telegraphing his movements every time he reaches out to correct her fingers, or fix something she misses. They take it in turns to empty traps as they come across them, Sophia getting more proficient in it the more traps she messes with.

They stop when her stomach growls loudly, her blushing profusely as Daryl sets up a small fire to cook a couple cans of beans over. She goes off to find some kindling, and by the time she gets back Daryl's set up a log either side of the fire for them to sit on, and after she dumps the kindling into the fire, he hands her a cooling can and a spoon.

"Been a couple days," he broaches eventually, his voice coming out carefully, "how you feelin'?"

She shoves her spoon in her mouth to give herself a second to think, things haven't been terrible, and besides watching her dad from the corner of her eye every time he's within her sights, she's felt relatively safe. Plus there's Carl, and Eliza and Louis, she hasn't had consistent friends her age in a long time; and, for once, she's felt consistently normal, not like she's wearing a mask that doesn't fit over her ears because she needs to have any and all senses available to hide her one good thing from her dad. She hasn't felt like that at all.

"I-" she starts, mouth still half full and Daryl gives her a pointed look as if he has any room to make her have manners (she thinks he has some weird mental promise to her mom not to let her go feral or something), so she pauses, she swallows, and she continues.

"I like it," it's soft, nervous, "dad hasn't bothered me since the first day and even though I'm pretty sure Mrs Grimes thinks you kidnapped me-"

Daryl chokes on his food with a startled laugh, "she what?"

Sophia shrugs, "Carl said she thinks dad's being mean to everyone because he lost me and mom, and she keeps looking at you and Glenn like you literally ripped me from his arms or something."

"Yeah I'm sure that jackass _would_ take any excuse to be an asshole," he snorts again, scooping another spoonful into his mouth before pointing at her with his utensil, "don't go tellin' yer ma I'm sayin' this shit around you."

She rolls her eyes, "you've said worse."

"She don't need to know that either."

After a while, Daryl grabs some dirt to snuff out the fire, announcing blearily that they should probably start heading back to the quarry. Sophia shifts immediately, pulling off her headband and letting her hair fall into her face for a moment, before running her hand through it and reaching into her pocket, the folding knife coming out of it.

She reaches across to give it back to him, like every other time she's been allowed to use it, but he looks between the weapon and her before closing her fingers around it and pushing it back towards her. He has that same look he got after everything started, back when the only gruesome horror she'd seen was Mr Cameron getting eaten by the geeks.

"I want you to keep that on you now," he says, quiet but serious, "things're different now, camp's too big for me to keep watchin' you, an' I need to know you got somethin' on ya that keeps you alive. Understand?"

She nods, mouth a thin line as she runs her fingers along the grooves of the knife, it's too big for her hands, but when Daryl had first let her use it Glenn had said she'd grow into it. She hopes even with everything going on that that's true.

She watches him bite the inside of his cheek and shift forward on the log, reaching over and cradling one side of her head with his hand, fingers weaving through small knots that have collected in her hair and running his thumb along her temple. Her eyes close on instinct, leaning into his touch where she'd shy away if it was anyone else (except her mom and Glenn).

"I wanna say I'll always be here," he continues, prompting her eyes to open so she knows she'll pay attention, "but you and I both know that ain't true, no matter how hard we can try t' stick together."

Things always go wrong, they always do, even with little things like that dumb wall, and with big things like her mom. Things always go wrong.

Daryl's eyes soften, almost imperceivably, but Sophia knows him - probably better than he thinks she does - and his kindness is reserved for her, for her mom, Glenn a lot more than before all this, Merle too whether he deserves it or not. Sophia knows his kindness means everything, just the same as her trust does.

"I will always come lookin' though, no matter how long it takes, just like if we lost Glenn, just like with yer ma."

* * *

Glenn gets back a day later, the hat from his old uniform firmly over his head again and a backpack bursting with as many supplies as one person could carry hanging from his shoulders.

Sophia manages to spot him first, coming out of her tent right at daybreak before even half the dew of the morning has settled onto the grass. He's dirty, probably exhausted, but she runs into him anyway, arms winding around his stomach as he laughs and sheds his bag to hug her back.

Shane, who'd spotted them from where he'd been keeping watch atop the RV, comes down to greet Glenn, clapping him on the shoulder with a solid greeting of equal parts _oh my god you're okay_ and _oh my god you actually got stuff_.

They exchange a few words, Glenn lifting his bag onto the hood of their truck as Shane and Sophia come to either side of him - the other man balancing his elbow on the roof while Sophia lifts her weight onto the hood with her forearms, mostly balancing on her toes - he runs through a few of the places he went through, some easy paths devoid of geeks he knows better than anyone else, all while pulling different cans and bottles and fabrics out of his backpack.

"For the lady," he says at one point, then suddenly Sophia has a softball in her hand, she looks up, "place had bats too, I can grab one if I run down again."

Shane raises an eyebrow, a smile tugging at his lips, "you play?"

She shrugs sheepishly, "sorta."

" _Sorta_?!" Glenn pipes up, incredulous, she flushes red, "you took my knees out by accident when you were ten, 'Phia."

She sticks her tongue out indignantly, "you weren't stood far back enough! Even _mom_ said so and she doesn't even know how to play!"

"We were _practicing_! I didn't think you were going to pull back that hard," he points at her, "you are a tiny menace."

She juts her finger out in return, "I won't hesitate to take your knees out again, old man!"

"Oh yeah, pipsqueak? I-"

"Children, please," Shane becomes between hardly smothered snickers.

He holds a hand out between the two of them still with barely-concealed amusement dancing across his features; she and Glenn share a look before they both turn and stick their tongues out at him instead. He rolls his eyes, but there's no malice to the movement, just the same as when he does the same around Carl.

"You really bring quite the personality out of her, don't you."

They let the levity sit in the air for a moment, Sophia rolls her new ball between her hands to test the weight, Glenn taps the top of everything he collected to count them, Shane scribbling the count in a loose notebook with a sharpie, the letters bold and clear on the small pages.

When conversation starts again, there's a slight shift, Sophia feels it in the way Shane asks about the state of the city, about the chance of things clearing up. Glenn is just as quiet, a little solemn, a look behind his eye that has her reaching out to brush his fingers against his arm, the same as he does for her; he talks on the sheer amount of geeks in there, the low, low chance of survivors even being left, the things abandoned in the streets by the military, by the people.

"If anyone were to go in there not _knowing_ , man," he says, eyes wide with his own memories, "I feel like we gotta put signs up on the main highway or _something_."

Shane runs a hand over his face, expression considering before it scrunches in disappointment, "I would love to, Glenn, I really would," his gaze flicks across the quiet camp, "but hardly anyone here knows how to fight, and we don't have enough that do for me to feel okay sending someone out there, _especially_ if they had to go alone."

She looks between the two, at the conflict on Shane and the disappointment on Glenn; they're both helpers, that much is obvious, they care about people and want what's best for them, Shane just has his focus on camp, which, she can't really blame him for.

"I dunno how many people would try going in there anyway," she tries, biting her tongue to stop from wincing when they look down at her, "I mean, it's a city, right? I feel like everybody knows they'd be bad news by now… an-and even if not, the empty road in should be a red flag right?"

Glenn exhales heavily, "yeah, probably."

* * *

Her first time in the RV that isn't using the bathroom involves Sophia, Carl, a deck of cards, and some twigs. Dale gave Carl the cards earlier and Sophia hadn't played any 'age-appropriate' games with them since, like, ever - unless solitaire counts, because everyone's played solitaire.

So Carl, curious as ever, has her teach him a few games that she picked up on the road. The minute she explains the rules he dashes off and comes back with an exceptionally large bundle of twigs.

Mid-way through another game the RV tilts, Dale appearing on the stairs leading in and smiling at them.

"When I gave you cards I imagined you'd play Go Fish or something," he chuckles, leaning in through the door and staring at their pile of twigs gathered on one end of the table, "what's this?"

"Blackjack," Carl says, peeking at his cards and knowing at his lip.

Dale steps into the RV properly then, leaning against the counter opposite the table and looking to her, she almost goes red, "who taught you to play blackjack of all things?"

She throws two more twigs onto their pile and Carl grimaces, "Merle and Glenn - Daryl wasn't that impressed but it's just cause I have a better poker face than him." A better one than Carl too.

Their cards flip over and she's won, again, the sticks bundle back onto her pile. She looks over and she the question on the man's face before he has a chance to say it, Merle might scare her, but damn if he didn't at least try giving those drives sustenance.

She cracks a bashful smile, "there aren't a lot of things to do on the road, 'sides, it's not like we actually had anything other than food to bet anyway."

"The twigs mean anything?" He asks, pointing to her pile, marginally bigger than Carl's now.

So the boy proceeds to explain how they don't really mean anything besides making the other person do stuff, ten twigs is like filling up a stamp card from a coffee shop: free reward - which is why Carl's been desperately trying to keep his pile larger than ten. Dale looks beyond dubious at their personal gambling scheme, but he's doesn't seem mad about it (which is good because, quite frankly, Sophia doesn't want anybody being mad at them, least of all mad at Carl… she doesn't know what his tolerance is like yet.)

When they're left alone they play a few more games before wrapping their twigs in elastic bands and running back outside.

* * *

A week. She lasts a _week_ with these people before she does something stupid and, now, sits in the RV bathroom after locking herself in and huffing on fat tears that roll down her cheeks.

She and Carl had been playing further in the treeline than he was supposed to, but he'd wanted to teach her how to climb, toss her softball over a little more than two feet, and when she'd grabbed her windbreaker and knife to be safe - like Daryl told her to be - his eyes had lit up and they'd traipsed into the trees.

Glenn had waved them off, so it's not like they'd disappeared without telling anyone, _that_ would have been idiotic.

They'd been out there an hour before they heard Mrs Grimes calling for Carl, they'd gone back immediately because she sounded so _mad_ , and when she saw them hop back into camp she'd grabbed Carl's arm and pulled him further into the tent area - everyone was watching.

Sophia had followed - of course she did - Mrs Grimes had been yelling, almost red in the face about how reckless Carl was being as if they hadn't taken what precautions they could, as if Sophia didn't have a knife too big for her stuffed in her pocket, or Glenn hadn't watched them traipse into the mud, or the fact they hadn't gone far enough to not get back within minutes of being called.

Mrs Grimes' arm had moved, so fast Sophia still can't believe she darted forward just as quickly, because Carl had spent the week talking circles about his dad and everything great about him that in that moment Sophia had realised he rarely mentioned his mom, he spent more time with Shane like she did with Daryl and her stupid brain had connected dots that weren't even on the same planet.

He may be older than her, but she's bigger (by a few inches _at least_ ) so by all rules of protection, she had to protect him, because she's bigger and she can take a hit, and if Mrs Grimes had been going to touch _anyone_ , it wasn't going to be him.

But Mrs Grimes had frozen the moment Sophia put herself between them, everyone had. She was breathless and even in her peripherals she could see Merle's hand curl around Glenn's bicep, she could see her dad grinning around a cigarette, and she could see the others _staring_.

It was barely a minute, but Mrs Grimes had looked between her hand - outstretched to point at the _tents_ , for god sake - and Sophia and Carl in front of her. Her eyes had been wide and Sophia couldn't even imagine what Carl looked like, she just felt the sensations of him twisting the wrists trapped in her grip to try and grip her back.

The arm had fallen to her side when Shane took his first steps to approach the situation. But Sophia saw the arm drop, her actions catching up even faster than they had before, and she'd bolted to the RV for no other reason than it had a room with a lock.

It had been a _week_.

Sitting in that tiny stall, she wonders if the situation would have been better or worse if Daryl were at camp and not out hunting. Maybe he would have seen her gearing up and stopped her before she made an absolute idiot out of herself, or maybe he could have stopped Mrs Grimes shouting in the first place, maybe he'd have seen Merle holding Glenn back from breaking the tension before she had an apt opening to flee, or if he'd have seen her dad smiling and punched him square in the jaw like he'd always wanted to.

But it's barely the afternoon, and Daryl wouldn't be back until sunset, at least. She doesn't know what she wants to do, but she feels the weight of her knife in her pocket and thinks about how much worse that could have been if she'd pulled it out, she can't remember if she thought about it or not, but the thought is there now and it nearly makes her feel sick.

Everybody is going to hate her, because- because she thought the worst of Mrs Grimes and she hasn't even known her as long as some of the others. She's going to get her and Glenn and Daryl and Merle- she's going to get all of them kicked out of camp because everybody knows she has the knife on her and if they think she thinks Mrs Grimes is dangerous? She'd curse in her head if she didn't think that'd make Daryl more disappointed.

She's supposed to be good, and she screwed up and Carl is going to be mad at her and he's the first friend she's had in months and she acted like his _mom_ was dangerous.

Daryl won't be back until sunset… maybe Glenn can salvage the situation (or Merle will make it worse), maybe Carl's dad taught him something about all the bad people he used to lock up and maybe he won't be angry with her. Maybe-

She's never that lucky.

Her dad had been smiling. He knew. This was his fault too but no one would believe her. Not unless she pulled up her sleeves to show off the scars, the old burns, the bandages still hiding the length of her elbow because she's too chicken to uncover them even after weeks. The first time Daryl saw them he'd looked ready to kill, she- she doesn't know if she's ready for more people to be like that yet.

The RV rattles for a moment, yanking her out of her thoughts as her ears, instead, focus in on the voices of Glenn and Dale drifting through the ceiling window, they're settling on the roof of the RV, talking about Atlanta again and their families. Not about her.

That's either very good, or very bad. Frankly, she doesn't really want to know.

There's a noise from outside, the door at her back shifting as somebody leans their body against it, countering her own, albeit meagre, weight. There's nothing else, the activity outside continues as normal, Glenn and Dale's conversation on the roof naturally flowing from family to their favourite foods.

"I'm sorry." The voice almost startles her, soft and muffled behind the closed door. Mrs Grimes.

Why is she apologising? Sophia- she's the one who acted out, made her look bad. Why is she saying sorry?

She hears Mrs Grimes inhale slowly, "I'm sorry for scaring you, for making you think you had to protect my boy from me." Sophia sniffles. "But thank you, for being willing to protect him whether you needed to or not."

Sophia looks at her hands, fingers still trembling, and clenches them, her nails digging into her palms. This is wrong, it has to be, _she_ acted out, _she_ did something wrong. Adults don't apologise.

(Except for the hundreds of times her mother has whispered the words into her hair. Except for all the times Glenn has said it after she cried about something he said when they were both much younger, when he apologised for all of this happening even when it wasn't anywhere near his fault. Except when Daryl has said the words, not often for a man of few words, but each time he's said it for something significant. Adults don't apologise, except them.)

Mrs Grimes continues, "you don't have to come out yet, but I want you to know that that you are safe here, if my family decides to leave at any point, don't think we'll go anywhere without you and your boys."

There's another pause, the statement hanging in the air between them like a proverbial olive branch

"Carl hopes you're okay, he also wanted me to tell you that he still has ten twigs which mean you have to stay?" Amusement is prevalent in the statement alone, Sophia bites her lip, "I'm not sure what that means, but I guess you do, so I'll leave that with you."

The door shifts and she listens to the footsteps exit the RV.

Carl still has his twigs.

After a minute she wipes her eyes and unlocks the door.

(By the time Daryl gets back later it's like nothing happened, but Sophia figures Merle tells him before the nightly firepit because he actually sits with them and doesn't hide out with Merle in their tent. Whether the others know that he knows is beyond her, but having his warmth next to her is enough, it always has been.)

* * *

She's babysitting. Sort of.

It's early morning and she sits on a rock down by the lake of the quarry watching Merle shuffle through his bag. He knows she's there, he'd eyed her when she'd followed him down, but she'd been awake and if Merle was planning to get high as a kite she was going to make sure he didn't drown before Daryl could wake up and come get him.

She's not watching him like a hawk like she had when they'd first met, she knows full well Merle could do any number of things to her, but she also knows the only thing he's ever actually done is yell, and when he's had his fix he has a tendency to trip over his own two feet. So, while Merle as a person isn't someone she likes to spend time with, she knows she's not in any immediate danger, especially when Daryl is barely just up the hill.

He thought she'd been asleep when he'd had his conversation with Merle the day they busted him from that infested jail, but she'd never been the calmest sleeper around new people.

Merle would never do anything.

Except, of course, talk until her ears fall off.

"Ya know, ya got that look abou' ya, bet ya could slit someone's throat and get away with it."

She raises her eyebrow at him, slowly turning the page of the book in her lap before humming, "probably."

"I can't get away with shit," Merle gripes, tossing his head back to swallow some concoction of pills.

"I know, Merle."

"Pigs always say ah disturb the damn peace, but _I_ am just tryin' t' live mah fuckin' life."

"I know, Merle."

* * *

The group has been discussing something for hours, Sophia and Carl sit with Eliza and Louis, letting the kids scribble more sketches onto the concrete as they try and listen in to the main conversation that they're apparently too young to be a part of.

(Daryl hadn't wanted to leave them out of it, but everybody else seemed to.)

The most Sophia's caught is because Glenn is shouting, and he only shouts when he's frustrated, and he only gets frustrated when people aren't listening to him. Merle seems to be pitching in for parts of the conversation, Andrea too, Shane keeps shifting on his feet and Mrs Grimes' arms are crossed so whatever they're talking about it's either complicated, risky, or dangerous, probably all three.

She watches Daryl bite at the skin on his thumb, eyes flicking between Glenn and the rest of the group, every so often his attention diverts to her and Carl, he knows they're trying to listen, none of them try to pretend otherwise.

Something Merle says makes Glenn and Daryl's faces twist, equal _No_ responses leaving their mouths and even with that, Merle doesn't look discouraged from whatever it is he decided on or tried to opt into.

"I think they're trying to send a group to Atlanta with Glenn," Carl whispers after a while, eyes focused on the way Shane messes anxiously with his hair, "Shane was saying a couple days ago that Glenn isn't bringing enough back on his own." She has a feeling Carl wasn't really supposed to know that.

Oh, that makes sense. Glenn knows the routes like the back of his hand, but he can only get in and out quietly with so much stuff, he can't make the trips everyday so really what he'd been bringing back on any of his trips was barely topping up what the group has been getting through - and _some people_ refuse to ration properly.

"Bigger groups are harder to keep track of," she comments idly, "and if too many people go the camp'll be less protected."

Carl pokes her arm, "we could protect it."

She snorts, "as if _anyone_ would let us, I'm pretty sure your mom is still super against you having a weapon."

He grumbles, face contorting into a grumpy pout, "it's so dumb, I should at least have _something_ ," he tries to look at her imploringly.

"I don't think your mom would appreciate me teaching you how to use my knife, Carl."

"She doesn't have to know!"

"She will _find_ a way to find out."

He grumbles again but folds his arms and drops it. He'll get the chance he's looking for at some point, but Mrs Grimes still sees him as a kid, and Sophia's quite sure if _her_ mom were here, she'd be treating Sophia the same. But Daryl told her that's not their reality anymore, and one way or another Mrs Grimes will figure that out, she hopes without too much tragedy involved.

The conversation they'd lost focus on starts to dissipate, Carl leaping up and running full pelt at Shane and Mrs Grimes, probably to grill them about what the hell that just was. Sophia watches Merle land a 'friendly' punch to Glenn's arm as the two of them head in the direction of their tents; a few others head off as well, Louis and Eliza bouncing up to find their dad.

Daryl makes his way over to her, a stricken look on his face that doesn't tell her anything good. Whatever look she's giving him makes him wince, but he takes the final steps over and kneels down in the dirt to be closer to where she sits.

"So, some of these folks are headin' to Atlanta in a few hours."

Her eyes narrow, "what does _some_ mean?"

"Glenn and Merle," that's a risky combination, "uh, Andrea, T-Dog, Jacqui and your friends' dad."

She nods, "okay… why does it look like you have something to tell me?"

His eyes close and he sighs, "I'm gonna go on a hunt, but, you can't come with me."

"What?! Why?" She shoots up, forcing Daryl to stand to avoid falling backwards. She looks up at him, not sure if her face is twisted in a glare or something akin to hurt.

"Hey, I don't like it either," he says, hands balling around his jeans, "but I'm gonna be gone for a few days and you haven't practised enough for me to feel okay dragging you into the woods just you and me for more than one night," he inhales, "I'm prolly gon' go real far, you're safer here."

"I'm safer with _you_!" Hell she'd be fine if Merle was staying, just _someone_ , she likes this group but she's only been here going on three weeks and even if everybody knows, with everyone taking care of her gone-?

"Shane'll take care o' ya-"

"I don't want Shane to take care of me!" She doesn't mean to yell, but she knows her dad would have no qualms about going after her, or Carl, or Eliza, or Louis without Daryl around, "you said you wouldn't leave me and now all of you are!"

"' _Phia_." He doesn't yell, but he says the words with enough force that she straightens up and bites her tongue. He kneels back in front of her, reaching up and wiping a tear tumbling down her cheek, "I know you're scared, don't think I'm not gonna be thinkin' 'bout ya the whole time I'm out there. But you _are_ safer here," he looks at her imploringly, "you're allowed to be upset with me, but promise me you will stay put."

She sniffles, looking down at the gravel and folding her arms, mumbling out, "I promise."

She watches his legs shift and doesn't even have to look up to know he's making a face at her. He lets her pout for a minute before tapping the underside of her chin to get her to look up, her offers her the slightest lip quirk, and shifts again to rest his elbow on his knee and hold his fist up to her, pinkie out.

Her face twists as she wrestles with holding down a smile of her own, Daryl never does this with other people so close, he got flustered when Merle caught them making a promise on the first night they'd brought him back to their first place.

She holds out her hand and their fingers link, shaking before the pads of their thumbs press together and they break apart.

"You'll be alright."

"You better be too."

Glenn better bring home a softball bat after all this.


	3. Calluna

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Calluna (Heather) • Flower of good luck and protection"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So... as you can see this chapter got l o n g - as I was writing I did not anticipate it getting to be like this but just like last time I had that 'oh shit' moment and here we are... I've spent way too long writing the last sections of this tonight, as of posting this it is 5:30am on a Monday morning and I have a lecture today; so if some of this is shittier than others, I apologise, but I'm not editing this monster.  
> I also apologise for everyone who hates long chapters, but this just how it be, and I'd rather a short chapter count than a long one, cause those scare me more than big word counts - I'm never gonna convince myself a chapter will be short again so none of you do that either.

_Queen Victoria popularized the meaning of heather as good luck in England because of her appreciation for Scottish lore and traditions. Victorians may also have associated heather with good luck because of its scarcity at the time, much like we consider four-leaf clovers good luck. In the sixteenth century, Clan Ranald, a Scottish clan, believed that they won a battle because they wore white heather in their bonnets, which gave them both luck and protection._

* * *

The camp empties quickly, Glenn begrudgingly leading his group down the quarry and towards the city with Merle already on him about something, and Daryl sharing a specific look with Shane before traipsing off into the woods.

By sundown, Sophia greets paranoia like an old friend.

The firepit burns quietly in front of her, her left shoulder pressed against Carl's right as they share a blanket Shane had draped over them while they ate. Every other minute her eyes flick across the camp to her dad at his fire - much bigger than the main group's despite orders not to - she thinks he knows she keeps looking, because his usual frown is replaced by something akin to smugness.

Shane notices, eventually, because at some point he disappears from next to her and returns with a Rubik's cube that takes so much effort to twist she actually has to focus on it.

Later in the night, Carl falls asleep on her shoulder and Mrs Grimes lets her sleep in their tent.

**~ • ~**

Her arms shake even as they hang at her sides, the fingers on her right hand bound individually by bandages, and her elbow covered in patches and gauze with a sweater three sizes too big from the lost and found hiding it all.

The nurse that brought her down offers a soft smile and hands a plastic cup of coins over to her, Sophia can't smile back but she takes the cup in a sleeved hand with a nod.

Then she's left alone, because Grady Memorial is busy and nobody has time to watch a twelve-year-old girl trundle over to the phones in the corner of the waiting room. The noise is a lot, and she wishes she had her headphones but everything in the last few hours has been a bit of a blur and she can only remember a few defining bits.

She shifts her weight between her legs as she stands in front of the phone, there's only a couple numbers she could call, and Glenn isn't even on shift today so that narrows it down to one. People pass behind her and she tries her best not to flinch, but even as she rattles the quarters in the cup, her shoulders are up to her ears; Grady is usually a bit crowded, but recently it's like everyone's come down with something.

Running a shaky, bandaged hand through her hair, and exhaling as slowly as she can manage, she shoves the coins in the slot and punches in the numbers before pressing the reciever to her ear and covering the other with her hand.

It takes a minute, a couple of rings reverberating through her system with the chasing thought of what to do if nobody answers. But as her body winds itself into a tighter spiral, the other end goes through, and a familiar honey-voiced southern man answers.

"Hyello."

"Um," she swallows, "Mr Cameron, its Sophia."

"Miss Peletier!" His excitement would usually make her smile, but she's still not sure she can do that yet, "to what do I owe the pleasure?"

"What time does Daryl finish?" She knows he's there, he works odd hours but he never changes days, it's easier to keep track of him that way.

Something in her voice must tip Mr Cameron off to something, because he softens out, speaks a little more gently, "don't get off 'til eight? What's the problem, sweetheart?"

She pauses, trying not to choke on the air, trying to push back the salty tears threatening to leave her eyes, "it's- I can wait- just- my mom," she takes a quick, shaky breath, "I'm at Grady but I can't stay overnight… I can wait until he's finished though, I-"

"No, no," he interrupts quickly, she can hear him breathing through the line and tries to follow it, "we ain't leavin' you in Atlanta by yerself fer four hours; he can come an' get ya an' y'all can come back here. That alright?"

She rattles the rest of the change in the cup still in her hand and sniffles, "mhmm."

"You eaten anythin' today?"

Her stomach makes a noise but it, just like her, has gotten good at being quiet.

"I don't remember."

He probably nods, she can nearly imagine it, his salt and pepper hair peeking out of his baseball cap, and his jumpsuit covered in oil stains, freckled face watching the sun from the window she knows his phone faces.

"I'll pass all this along, don't you worry. You just sit tight and he'll be there in thirty."

It takes at least forty to get from Covington to Atlanta, but how Daryl drives is none of her business until she's in the car and even then the only thing she really cares about is the fact that he's even there at all.

"Thanks, Mr Cameron."

"Always, Miss Peletier."

**~ • ~**

Shane can't always watch her, she knows that, he's the de-facto-leader of everyone here so he has more things to worry about than making sure he dad stays at least ten feet away from her at all times. He does what he can, let's her and Carl trail behind him when he's doing little things around camp and makes sure anyone from Mrs Grimes, to Dale, to Amy has their eye on her at any time he can't be at camp.

It's the second day of everybody being gone, the sun is dragging itself up to the brush the walls of the quarry in its light and chase away the dregs of the night's cold air. Sophia sits atop the RV, watching the sky come alive with Shane in the lawn chair just behind her, his shotgun leaning up against it and two cans of almost-empty soda on the cooler.

She hasn't been up here all night, but she did wake up to a noise while it was still dark. When she'd come out Dale and Shane were swapping shifts and she'd followed him up quietly; he hadn't asked too many questions, just draped his jacket over her shoulders, let her pick their drinks and a snack to share for the hours in the cold, and every-so-often asked a question about her school or something. Gentle things.

"Carl says you and his dad were best friends," she says at some point, the camp still quiet and sunbeams still barely tickling her nose. Shane probably looks at her, but her eyes stay on the shaded shape of Atlanta, "d'you think Mr Grimes is still alive?"

There's a sigh, either like this is something he's been asked before, or something he's thought far too long and far too hard about, "kiddo-" for once she doesn't bristle at the nickname "-there is a lot of things I wish for in this world, and one of them would be having my best friend with me right now. But I went to get him, and I couldn't hear a heartbeat, he wasn't breathing… if we ever get back into King's County, maybe I'll give him a proper burial, but the best I can do for Rick now is take care of his family."

She looks back at him but his attention is on the skyline now instead. Watching his face she can see the turmoil in his eyes, she wonders if Daryl thinks the same about her mom, there's no way to really confirm her death, but Sophia has to wonder if Daryl and Glenn are taking care of her because they think it's the best thing they can do while they can't bury her mom. Leaving someone isn't easy, especially someone you care about, but she knows, Carl knows - hell, she's pretty sure everyone at the camp knows - what Shane's version of 'taking care of his family' has become; it's a complicated thing, Carl's only mentioned it once and it seems its been happening for long enough for him to feel weird about not knowing how to feel about it yet, but it's complicated.

(She knows, more than anything, that he still wants his dad back, whether that's to love his mom again or just so he can _be_ there. Shane is still Carl's family, he just fills a different role than Carl's dad, and Carl isn't ready to blur those lines yet, he still loves Shane, but, Shane can't fill the role he maybe wants to at the moment. Carl just wants his dad, in the exact same way she just wants her mom, and right now neither of those outcomes are available to them, but, they don't want to settle for anything else).

"You should talk to Carl," she says, trying not to give too many of her thoughts away through her expression, "he's a lot smarter than anyone gives him credit for."

Shane doesn't give away if he knows what she's talking about, but he bites the inside of his cheek and nods, running a hand through his hair.

"Yeah. He is."

* * *

Four days in, the radio goes off. Sophia's by the washing lines folding clothes with Amy and talking with Carl who's been making more squirrel traps by the fire - Mrs Grimes had eyed him earlier, asked a quick question about it, but left him to it when Sophia promised she wouldn't let him tangle his fingers in the wire.

Sophia manages to catch the clothes Amy drops in her rush to get to the radio, hurriedly throwing them back over the line before Carl manages to yank her towards the growing huddle. When they get over there, they hear the tail-end of a man speaking, something about Highway 85. Carl's grip on her hand tightens.

"We're just outside the city," Amy says, her previously excited grin morphing into a frustrated frown when the man doesn't reply again, "damn it. Hello? Hello?" she groans, glaring at the radio like it didn't work on purpose, "he couldn't hear me. I couldn't warn him"

Dale scratches at his beard, waving his hand at Amy, "try to raise him again," he then turns to Shane across the little group, "come on, son, you know best how to work this thing."

Shane steps over and squats down beside the radio, pulling the receiver to his mouth and inhaling, "hello, hello, is the person who calls still on the air? This is officer Shane Walsh, broadcasting a person unknown, please respond," they wait through a moment of static, Carl's hold on Sophia only getting tighter. Nothing happens, and Shane looks up, shaking his head, "he's gone."

Mrs Grimes looks across at everybody gathered, a light gleam of hope shimmering in her dark eyes, "there are others. It's not just us."

Shane nods from where he still squats by the radio, "we knew there would be, right? That's why we left the CB on."

"Lots of good it's been doing."

"Okay," Shane stands, folding his arms.

That sounds like the start of an argument if Sophia's ever heard one.

Mrs Grimes continues, "I have been saying ever since Glenn suggested it that we ought to put signs up on 85 to warn people away from the city."

Amy cuts in, a stricken expression marring her features, "folks got no idea what they're getting into."

"And like I said to Glenn when he first brought it up: we ain't got the time nor the manpower to send someone down there safely and put them up in the first place," Shane states, almost glaring.

Sophia knows it would never have been smart to send someone down, even back when the conversation first arose all those weeks ago, but she still can't help but feel like she talked people down from this in the beginning, like she's condemned this poor stranger potentially to death.

"I'll go," Mrs Grimes insists, words sharp and biting, "give me a vehicle."

"Nobody goes anywhere alone. You know that."

The woman's glare is scathing, irritated, as she stomps past the rest of the group towards her tent. Shane sends a look towards Sophia and Carl - she doesn't know if it's because he's listened to her about talking to Carl yet, or just because he wants them to stay put - and follows after Mrs Grimes.

She and Carl watch them go.

Then they're back around the ashes of the old fire with the adults bustling around them with whatever jobs they've either volunteered for or been given.

"Maybe we should go put signs up," Carl mumbles, looking down at his in-progress trap and digging the heel of his shoe into the dirt.

She shifts their hands to intertwine their fingers, "your mom and Shane would kill us."

He glares at the remnants of last night's fire, "they're probably too busy making out to even notice we'd be gone."

"Carl," she says softly, squeezing his hand until he looks up at her, "what's wrong?"

His eyes suddenly shine with quiet tears he doesn't allow himself to shed. She takes a second to look up at the rest of camp, catching Dale's eye; he tilts his head with a silent question and she flicks her gaze towards the RV, he nods.

She stands, giving Carl's arm a quick tug and crossing camp to the RV. She manages to free her hand from his iron grip when they get inside, nudging him gently towards the back room where the beds are; he gives her a single, wet look, but wanders back there after she shoves a stray packet of tissues into his hands.

She loiters by the door for a minute, hands clasping atop her head as she whispers a shaky, repeated "I can do this," to herself.

"If anybody can get that boy to be honest," she startles, looking down the steps at Dale who offers, what's probably the last, two cans of Coke to her, "it's you."

She takes the sodas and offers a meek smile, "I hope so."

He winks almost conspiratorily, "you two get on like a house on fire." Sophia doesn't quite know what's good about a house being on fire, but, she smiles a little brighter as he continues, pointing up to the RV roof, "I'll be up there if you need anything."

He closes the door when she nods.

Sophia exhales heavily, giving herself another whispered reassurance before turning and crossing into the back room. Carl's huddled himself into the back corner of the left bed, shoes on the floor so he can tuck his legs up to his chin, his eyes are red but he still looks like he's holding everything in, he hasn't even touched the tissues he's dumped on the bedside table.

"You're allowed to cry, you know."

He swipes at his eyes roughly and swallows, "no I'm not, boys can't cry."

She scoffs, putting the sodas on the table and sitting at the edge of the bed, "who told you that?"

"Boys at school," he mumbles, watching her.

"Boys at school are dumb," she hums, pulling off her shoes to pull her legs up onto the bed and face her friends, "I think boys who cry are stronger than boys who don't."

"Really?"

"Mhmm, I'll bet your dad cries." Her dad doesn't, never has, and she doubts he ever will.

That seems to do it though. Carl lets out a choked sort of noise and lets the dam break, Sophia pulls a tissue out of the packet for him so he doesn't get snot and tears all over his sleeves; she allows him his space, doesn't stare, just let him get things out without the judgment others would thrust upon him in this sort of moment, without the worry of anyone thinking he's upset for anything less than a difficult, complicated mess of emotions.

After his initial burst there's a pause, just a beat, before his socked foot taps against Sophia's ankle and he makes the tiniest motion of stretching out his arms, she gives an equally minute nod, and then his arms are around her neck and hers worm around his torso. She can't even remember the last time she hugged someone her age, but he squeezes her tighter than anyone ever dares to; he doesn't think she'll shatter like glass if he holds her too hard, if he holds her at all, so they sit there in each others' arms and just _breathe_.

"The guy on the radio sounded like my dad," Carl mumbles eventually, the two of them still just sitting there, not letting go, "I don't know if it was, but it sounded just like him and he's going into the city- my mom and Shane are-"

He cuts himself off and she just holds him a little tighter.

"If it is him," she starts, pulling back only to lean around him and grab their soda's. They don't pull away too far, their knees still touching as they crack open the cans and settle back against the window, "Glenn'll find him."

Carl looks at her, a sparkle of hope in his eye but everything else still willing to crush it, "how can you be so sure?"

She shrugs, "cause Glenn's lucky like that, finding all the right people. He found Daryl and I when he was by himself, found Merle in the right cell when we went to bust him out of jail. He was driving when we met Shane."

The sparkle's a bit brighter now, because even when _she_ thinks about it properly, Glenn really has been the luckiest person she's ever met.

"And what about if it is him and he finds out about my mom and Shane?"

This one she can't really answer, Carl probably knows that, but he's looking for something, and she gives the best she can offer, "they'll probably talk, maybe argue, but… whatever happens, don't let them push you away from it, because their decisions affect you too."

He nods, "will you be there if I need you?"

She grabs his hand again.

They sit in a comfortable silence from then, their hands still linked and their soda cans emptying slowly to the background noises of the camp and the rumbling thunder from outside. They watch the sky through the window opposite them, overlooking the cliff and the city in the distance, grey clouds rolling over the blue with flashes lighting up inside them.

Sophia wonders if it's a real storm or a cloud burst preparing to pass.

She's had to sit through storms before, they're always loud and messy, and she's always ended up having to endure them by herself unless her mom isn't busy, or they're in the company of Glenn or Daryl.

A knock on the RV brings her attention away from the distant thunder. She and Carl clamber out of the bed, tugging their shoes on as they head over to the door and push it open; Dale stands before them with a small smile, stepping back as they sit on the steps to do up their laces.

"Everything alright now?" He asks, probably noticing the drying patch on the shoulder of her sweater.

Sophia nods, "for now."

"What's up?" Carl asks, double lacing his other shoe and standing, eyes ghosting over camp.

Dale shrugs one shoulder, "your mom's just gone to look for mushrooms, don't know how long she'll be."

"Shane go with her?"

"Well," Dale's eyes follow the trail Carl's just went on, his lip quirking downwards slightly, "Shane isn't here." Sophia has to guess that he knows how aware the two of them are to _that_ situation, because he pats the side of the RV and puts his smile back on, "Jim and I have to do some maintenance on this ol' thing, you kids want me to show you a thing or two?"

Sophia's never fixed up an RV before so she doesn't know how different it is from her mom's car, which, on several occasions she's had the pleasure of sitting outside in the boiling heat trying to put it back together after her dad broke something the night before that wasn't her mom's will to get out of bed the next day. She remembers when Daryl had caught her trying to see what was acting up in his truck maybe a year or so after they'd finally met - to say he'd been concerned would be putting it lightly - but since he couldn't really take back the fact she'd started learning, he did his best to teach her how to do things safely. That significantly decreased the amount of scars she's ended up with on her fingers, even the newer ones blend in.

(Not that that has made people stare at them any less. They all have questions, she knows that, but it's difficult to answer those questions without someone getting upset, and Sophia wants to make the least amount of people upset as possible).

She hops up onto the hood of Daryl's truck, next to where Dale's put the rest of his toolbox; Carl stays standing, eyes gleaming with curiosity as they scan the insides of the RV. Sophia manages to find the manual - a thick thing with way smaller text than she appreciates - buried under some of the tools, and Dale gives her a smile when he catches her squinting at the pages between his rambles mostly directed to Carl who he inevitably hands a screwdriver over to by the time Jim wanders over.

The thunder above them continues to rumble, the real threat of a downpour hanging over them and getting closer each time the clouds light up. She does her best to ignore it, the task becoming easier when Carl clambers up onto the truck hood next to her when Jim and Dale take a closer look at something properly acting up in the RV.

Dale grimaces, "that hose isn't long for this world, is it?

"No sir."

"Where the hell are we gonna find a replacement?"

They'll have to hope they can find another RV or something on the next run to Atlanta - if there is another run after this one - which, speaking of-

"It's been four days," Amy pipes up, chewing at her nails as she wanders over, "they said they wouldn't take longer than that right?"

Sophia plants her finger over the last word she'd deciphered before she looks up from the manual, "Glenn never takes longer than three by himself, with a group they might have stopped some extra places."

"We gave them a week, didn't we?" Carl adds, tapping the screwdriver against his wrist.

Dale sighs, looking between them all, "worrying won't make it better-"

He's cut off by the radio - moved to the top of the RV since this morning - coming alive with a loud squeal. Everyone in the immediate area comes closer as he rushes to grab it. Carl grabs her hand again, with his words from earlier playing in her head, she squeezes back.

"Hello, base camp! Can anybody out there hear me?" The voice is crackly and distorted but different from the one that broke through before, "base camp, this is T-Dog. Anybody hear me?"

Dale tries not to scramble, but even from where Sophia's sitting she notices the haste in him pulling the receiver into his hand, "hello? Hello? Reception's bad on this end. Repeat. Repeat."

T-Dog says something, but it jumbles and gets half covered by static; Dale fiddles with the dials.

"Is that them?" Mrs Grimes asks, coming up with Shane at her side.

Carl almost startles beside Sophia, when did they get back?

"We're in some deep shit," T-Dog states, sounding breathless and exhausted but clearer than before, "we're trapped in the department store."

Sophia catches a gasp between her teeth and suddenly she's not so much holding Carl's hand as he's holding hers. This can't be happening- Glenn _and_ Merle? They can't go back to two, they _can't_ , their jigsaw-piece group is too important to get broken like this.

Shane takes a step back, almost a stumble, but controlled enough for the others to see it as a thought-about move, "he say they're trapped?"

"There are geeks all over the place," T-Dog continues, not making anything in anyone's head any better, least of all Sophia's, "hundreds of 'em. We're surrounded."

Dale calls for him to repeat himself, but she knows he heard it, they all did. _Surrounded_. _Hundreds_. They're as good as dead.

Mrs Grimes exhales, "he said the department store."

"I heard it too," Dale agrees, nodding.

Everyone's attention, almost simultaneously, shifts to stare at Shane; some of them probably look more desperate than others, Amy especially seems wound up to run immediately out there to get Andrea herself.

After barely a breath, Shane's brain probably stuttering and remembering his own rules in the face of everyone's distress. He shakes his head, "no way. We do not go after them. We do not risk the rest of the group. Y'all know that."

Amy whirls on him in an instant, a fit of desperate, panicked anger shining in her eyes, "she volunteered to go to help the rest of us."

"I know, and she knew the risks, right?" _They all did_ , it goes unsaid, but Shane's gaze ghosts over at least one person with a connection to someone out there; Sophia squeezes Carl's hand a little tighter and hopes Shane doesn't see right through her. "See, if she's trapped, she's gone. So we just have to deal with that. There's nothing we can do."

"She's my sister, you son of a bitch," Amy practically spits, storming off towards the incline into the quarry with wet eyes.

Mrs Grimes passes a look to Shane, her back is to Sophia and Carl so neither of them can see what it is, but she calls after Amy and disappears just as quickly. Shane doesn't look particularly proud of what he had to say, but that's just it, he _had_ to say it, it's not like he has much of a choice in the matter. Sophia knows sending anyone else down would be a suicide mission, she doesn't have to like it, but she has to accept that Glenn might not come back, that she'll have to tell Daryl Merle isn't coming back either. She doesn't even want to imagine how that conversation will go.

Thunder rumbles above them again, still too far for the storm to be over them yet, but close enough that Sophia can almost smell the static in the air.

Carl slips off the hood of the truck and tugs her down with him, she only catches a fleeting glance at Shane - who looked to be about to come towards them - before Carl's pulled her into the tent she's been sharing with Glenn and flopping down amidst the mess of their sleeping bags and blankets.

(It's a cosy arrangement for how small the space is, even she and Carl's knees have to touch for them both to fit, but Daryl and Merle needed more room so she and Glenn had to make it work. They'd unzipped their sleeping bags to use as mattresses since they didn't have any camping beds spare, and then threw the abundance of pillows, stuffed animals, and blankets Sophia had grown accustomed to sleeping around even before the world fell apart. Glenn was always warm, so even without sleeping inside the sleeping bags, it's not like she was ever cold, plus, Glenn never pushed her away when she wanted to wrap her arms around him to chase away nightmares.)

Carl seems to like it all, he's never actually been in here before, but he leans back on Glenn's side and sighs, by the time Sophia lies beside him, the two of them staring up at the small lamp hanging from the central hook, the first cloud burst hits.

The rain is muffled by the tent walls, so much so it's almost peaceful, almost like they're just two kids camping for a school field trip or something. Like the world hasn't been thrown against the wall like her mom's favourite snow-globe that one time. Like they're not mimicking Sophia and her mother that same evening, here, trying to find all the right pieces to glue them back together in vain hope everything will just be the same after. Like the cracks and the lines aren't going to be all over the glass and they - the models on the inside - aren't going to be missing pieces that have fallen under the fridge with the glitter and liquid of their lives.

"They'll be okay," Carl says softly, head tilting to watch water roll down the side of the tent, "you said Glenn's lucky right? He'll get back, all of them will."

There's a mix of real hope and solemn acceptance in his voice, Sophia's sure hers mimics it as she turns to watch the rain on her side, "he'll bring your dad too."

"If he does," Carl flips onto his other side, facing her with his glimmering eyes that Sophia never wants to see melt into the floorboards like the glitter from that snowglobe, "I owe him, like, a thousand sticks."

"I'm sure he'll take a hug," she manages a giggle, but it might be hollow, she can't really tell, "maybe you convincing Shane to give him some extra food at the firepit will seal the deal."

He laughs out of his nose, "I could do that."

Maybe if Glenn really is going to die out there he'll be able to find out if her mom's gone too, at least those two will be able to take care of each other until everyone else gets to meet them.

In the peace of the rain, they fall asleep bundled in the blankets. For the first time in a while, Sophia doesn't dream of much, just colours and shapes and laughter from days long since past. She's woken by the warmth of the sun on her face and she blinks herself awake to sit up and see who's come in.

"Hey, sweetheart," Mrs Grimes greets, almost a whisper as Carl stirs beside her, "how're you two doing?"

She nods, pursing her lips, "we're okay."

"Mom?" Carl mumbles blearily, rubbing at his eyes and sitting up, "is something wrong?"

"Is Amy feeling better?" Sophia adds quickly.

Mrs Grimes smiles, not as bright as usual, but it's something, "everything's fine. Amy's doing… as well as she can. What about you?"

She shrugs a shoulder, her hands hiding in her sleeves, "trying not to think about it."

There's a nod, "I need to give him a haircut-" a groan interrupts her as Carl flops back against the pillows, Sophia snorts, Mrs Grimes continues, "as I was saying, he needs a haircut, and I wanted to know if you wanted one too."

Sophia's eyebrows scrunch together, does she? Sophia hasn't ever really let her hair grow out before, her mom never let her hair grow out _at all_ , but she knew Sophia might've gotten bullied at school if she made her get her hair cut as short as that - not that bullying was really the worst thing going on, but Sophia didn't need _more_. Running her hands through her dirty-blonde bob, she looks at Mrs Grimes and shakes her head.

"No thank you."

"Alright," Mrs Grimes reaches out and grabs Carl's hand, pulling him out of the tent as he tries, in vain, to stay a dead-weight, "c'mon, baby, you have to."

Sophia follows them out with a small smile, helping yank Carl to his feet and sticking her tongue out at his betrayed gasp; she makes sure to wave and stay within sight as she dashes across camp to the RV, leaving the Grimes family to sit by the firepit and have their time.

Dale's up on the roof again, pacing the length of it every couple of minutes with the binoculars hanging from his neck and the radio turned on and still in reach. She pulls herself up the ladder and knocks on the roof as she reaches the top, offering a quick wave as she hauls herself the rest of the way up.

Dale smiles, wandering over, "welcome to the watchtower, Little Miss."

"The storm getting any closer?" She asks, accepting the binoculars when he offers them over to her.

"It's drifted a little west, but I imagine it might be back by the evening."

She can see the clouds over the cliffs around the quarry, a large gap between them that lets the sun break out over the camp yet leaves enough room for it to do as Dale thinks it might and circle back before they go to bed tonight. She hums trying to avoid trailing the scopes over the city as she surveys the rest of the valley before handing the binoculars back to Dale and wishing she was wearing her mismatched hoodie on if only to have a piece of Glenn with her in that moment.

Dale strolls the length of the RV again before squatting down to sit at the edge with a small groan, "old bones," he muses when he's finally settled and patting the spot next to him for her to sit. She does, and she finds herself in a little rhythm of her lengths swinging slowly and her body swaying in time with Dale's.

"I've been curious," he begins, nudging her shoulder gently, "how does a little thing like you end up with men like the Dixons? And Glenn, how does he factor in? You all seem rather close so I assume you've known each other from before all this."

She smiles a little, from outside they definitely look like a ragtag team brought together by the end of the world, but they're more of a ragtag group brought together by personal trauma in some way or another.

"I met Glenn when I was nine, he'd just gotten this job delivering pizzas in Atlanta and he used to bring them to this place my mom and I stayed at all the time," she doesn't bother naming it anything, it was basically a second home, and she imagines - what with Dale's shoulders twisting to look back towards camp - her companion has a decent idea of what kind of place she means, "we made friends pretty quickly since he came by a lot and he posed as my school tutor to come over even if my dad was home."

"And Daryl?"

She leans back on her arms, "my mom met him first, she never told me when so I don't know if it was before or after I made friends with Glenn, but I met him a little after I turned ten when he brought my mom to pick me up from school in his truck," she gestures towards the very truck parked by the RV now, "after that he'd just come over whenever my dad wasn't home, sometimes he'd pick me up from school by himself, but the first time he did it we were both _super_ awkward, but… it was good."

Dale laughs, hearty and full, like he can just picture Sophia - probably age eleven by that point - trying her best to sit still only to move too fast to scratch her cheek and make _Daryl_ flinch. That, sort of, started a lot for them.

"When all of this started," she starts again, shifting back to tuck her foot under her other leg, "I was with Daryl at his work, we'd holed up at his place for a while trying to make calls and stuff. Glenn found us himself after a week, said he'd tried to find my mom but had to get out of the city before they bombed it, a little after that we broke Merle out of jail which was kinda fun, and then we drove around for a bit before finally ending up here."

She knows there were times when Daryl was with them, before everything, where Merle was out of jail and crashing at his place, she knows there were plenty of openings for her to meet Merle, Daryl just never wanted her to.

Dale whistles lowly, nodding and looking a little impressed. She notices he doesn't ask about the little holes in her ramblings, doesn't ask why Daryl could only come over when her dad wasn't around, why Glenn had to pretend to be something else just to hang out, where her mom was that meant Daryl had to be watching her and Glenn had to go looking. He doesn't ask, because he probably has ideas - all, likely, quite spot on - and if there's one thing she likes about Dale, it's that he knows when and when not to speak his thoughts.

Something echoes in the distance that breaks their moment. It's a loud, blaring sort of beeping that bounces off the walls of the cliffs and catches the attention of everyone. Sophia scrambles to her feet as Dale hands her the binoculars, needing a lot longer than her to pull himself to his feet.

"Somebody talk to me!" Shane calls from the ground, shotgun in hand and Carl and Mrs Grimes right next to him.

Amy calls up just after, winding the end of her t-shirt in her hands, "is it them? Are they back?"

"Give her a minute!" Dale replies, finally pulling himself up to stand beside Sophia and rest a hand on her shoulder, "see anything?"

She squints through the lenses, spanning them across the road leading up to the quarry before finally spotting it racing up from the base. She pulls the binoculars away and hands them to Dale, nodding quickly and handing them back with a point in the general area it should be pulling up now.

"It's a car!" She shouts down, slipping down the side of the RV into Shane's arms to help lower her down, "red, stolen I think."

Carl comes rushing up to her when her feet meet the ground, but they're both pushed behind Shane as the car pulls in, siren blaring so loudly their hands come up to cover their ears. The man's gun is ready in his hands until the door pops open and Glenn pokes his head out, waving with his big stupid grin that Sophia would run straight over to if everything wasn't so _loud_.

Dale yells something over the noise, Glenn exclaims something back, then Shane storms over shouting his own words and Amy's crowding them probably asking about Andrea - Sophia can see Glenn reeling from the onslaught of voices over the car siren, his head whipping to keep track of everyone until Shane gets in his sights and smacks the hood of the car. Sophia watches Glenn nod and reach into the car, the hood popping up and Shane reaching in to pull at the battery and finally ending the racket.

"She's okay!" Glenn exclaims as the noise dies down, inhaling and looking at Amy so seriously he doesn't see Sophia until she barrels right into him, "she's- oof!"

Sophia watches Amy's feet back up from her peripherals, most of her face pressed teary-eyed into Glenn's shirt, he mumbles a few hushed reassurances before hooking his hands under her arms and hoisting her up to rest on his hip.

"Hey, I'm okay, I promise."

She sniffles, wrapping her arms around his neck and resting her head against his shoulder, "you scared me."

He gives her a little squeeze, whispering into her hair, "'m sorry."

Amy gives her a small smile before zeroing back in on Glenn, "Andrea. Is she coming back?"

"Yes," he nods, "yeah, everybody is. Well, Merle not so much."

Sophia's head shoots up and she and Glenn share a look, a look they've exchanged enough times for her to know Merle acted out, badly, but for once his actions got him worse than a verbal lashing from Daryl.

"Are you crazy?" Shane huffs, folding his arms after gesturing at the car, "driving this wailing bastard up here? Are you trying to draw every Walker for miles?"

Dale, clambering down from the RV and looking around, "I think we're okay?"

Shane pinches the bridge of his nose, "you call being stupid okay?"

"Don't call him stupid," Sophia pouts, "I had to really look to actually see him coming up, so I doubt a walker could track him in these hills."

"Hard to pinpoint the source," Dale nods, throwing his hands up peacefully when Shane throws him a look that Sophia's sure she would've gotten if she wasn't a kid (which is a weird thought for her), "I'm not arguing. I'm just saying."

Glenn winces, shifting Sophia's weight to hold her a little more securely, "sorry… got a cool car, though."

From the mouth of the quarry, a truck pulls up, all attention turning to it and everybody staring with bated breath until their people make an appearance.

Andrea jumps out first, running immediately to embrace Amy, the two woman sobbing into each other's arms and whispering the same reassurances Glenn still kisses into her hair now. Mr Morales appears alongside Jacqui and T-Dog; Eliza and Louis crash into him, quickly followed by his wife, Dale crossing the dirt to greet them, hug them, check them over.

Something in Sophia pulls her attention away from the heart-warming scene to look over at Carl. He looks back at her, eyes wet again, she wants to mouth an apology, go over and hug him again or something, but Mrs Grimes runs her hand down his arm and tugs him away from the reunions. Sophia watches her kneel to Carl's level, saying a few words as he sucks in shaky breaths.

Shane's head quirks to the side, he's as relieved as everyone else to see the rest of their group, of course he is, "how'd y'all get out of there anyway?"

"New guy," Glenn says, absentmindedly rubbing circles over Sophia's sweater, "he got us out."

"New guy?"

Mr Morales grins, "yeah, crazy Vato just got into town-" he turns back towards the truck- "hey, helicopter boy! Come say hello."

Sophia looks back towards the truck as a man comes out, he's wearing a police uniform, dirty from whatever the hell happened out in Atlanta and probably before. He's looking down at his shoes for a good few seconds, shoulders raising with deep, controlled breaths; when he looks up her breath almost hitches at the same speed as his own - the brown hair, the striking blue eyes, he looks just like-

"Dad!"

Carl's sprinting towards the man in an instant, kicking up dirt as they meet halfway and collapse into the ground with falling tears. Carl's hands wind into the man's shirt so tightly it's like he'll disappear if he lets go, legs winding around his waist as they get back to their feet; Sophia smiles softly at the scene, a deserved reunion after weeks of nerves, days of rambling, hours of crying. It's deserved.

(She wishes she could have one of her own, that her mother could just waltz up into camp and take Sophia into her arms. To smile at Glenn in that gentle way she always does. To look towards Daryl for help in making even the most trivial decision like what cereal she should pick for the week, to look at him in the way Sophia's only ever seen her give her dad in photos from their youth - before things took a distinct turn, long before Sophia was ever born, long before Sophia's grandparents ever decided they'd never be involved in her life.

But she knows, she knows that if her mom was by herself she'd be dead. She's weak, in similar places to Sophia but so many more, so many places Daryl couldn't help put back together before they got separated. Besides, it's selfish to wish something like this while Carl is still clinging to his dad like a lifeline.)

Mr Grimes kisses Carl's cheek as Mrs Grimes still watches, wide-eyed and mouth agape, Shane breaths out disbelieving laughs, a crooked smile pulling at his lips as Carl's dad crosses to finally embrace his wife - there's a spark in Mrs Grimes' eye when she looks at Shane over Mr Grimes' shoulder, but the watery, smile the latter sends him is so strong Sophia can feel the pure gratitude flooding out of it even as Glenn squeezes her in another hug.

**~ • ~**

It's dark outside, the power grids for the area having gone out hours ago. Sophia still has blood dried to the skin of her neck, sharp lines and red marks flaking through it from earlier… the panic, the vomiting, it was a lot.

She stares at the lamp they've situated in the middle of the bedroom floor, one of Daryl's from his hunting gear, her gaze shifting to the open can of beans he wants her to eat. But every time she looks at it she just has the urge to throw up again, clenching her fists to stop herself from reaching up and actually tearing through her skin to get Mr Cameron's blood off her.

He's dead. The people in the parking lot were dead. There are people walking around with their insides hanging out trying to eat other people and Sophia has no idea what's happened to her mom, to Glenn… she suggested going to Atlanta to find them when they got here - to Daryl's apartment, that it - but Daryl said it was too risky, no matter what the radios had said, a refugee zone in a major city would always be a bad idea and he'd said he wouldn't be surprised if it got overrun already.

Sophia feels exhausted, but she fears that closing her eyes will bring her worse nightmares than she's ever had before, so just like the hunger she tries to ignore it with her focus on the flickering flame and the sound of Daryl shoving as much furniture against his front door as possible.

The apartment is small but it has a fire escape he's used enough times to get them out safely if they need it.

A knock from the doorway pulls her attention up, Daryl stands there with a water bottle and dishcloth in one hand, and a bundle of clothes in the other. He's looking at her carefully, as if they're meeting again for the first time, because he knows as well as she does that she is on thin ice and neither of them are in spectacular positions to handle those emotions right now.

"Glenn kid left a bag of shit last time he stopped by," He mutters, coming to kneel opposite her and setting the clothes between them. She notices the jacket beneath the shirt and leggings is one of Daryl's, he eyes the bandages still around her elbow and hand before continuing, "figured you'd want something a little bigger over top though."

She nods silently, glancing at the water and cloth still in his hands. He settles into a sitting position and gestures almost timidly to her neck, she bites her tongue to avoid reaching up for it again and nods just as quietly as before. He shuffles forward, and then the cloth, now damp with water, presses to her skin, his other handing coming to rest gently in her hair.

Daryl's not a very physical person, he's not exactly much of a vocal person either, but he's always got out his thoughts and feelings somehow - especially with her mom, they always seemed to understand each other. With Sophia, he's always been more reserved, asking permission in one way or another before going even remotely near her.

He's gentle though, always has been, always tries to be, despite the temper she knows he can have.

(Never around her. Never around her mom. Just… in general.)

He gives a grunt when he's done, pushing Sophia's hand back down when she reaches up to check, and nodding at the clothes in front of her before standing and going back out to his main room.

The clothes Glenn had left last time are new, she figures he must have bought them with one of his last paychecks and instantly wants to see him more than she already did, they fit well and are that kind of soft you only get from clothes you haven't washed yet. Daryl's jacket drowns her, but in a way where she feels contained and safe, an all-encompassing blanket of his presence.

She sighs, dragging herself up to her feet and turning the lamplight down before exiting the bedroom. Daryl's pushed his sofa against the door, along with anything else heavy, there's a couple of backpacks left open on the kitchen counter on the other side of the room, cupboards emptied out next to them.

Her gaze drifts to the window of the fire escape, normally hidden behind the TV, but Daryl moved that whole unit to block the door too. It's open, the cold night air flowing in and making her pull Daryl's jacket tighter around herself; she crosses the room and spies him standing out there, leaning against the railing with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

"Are you okay?"

Her question doesn't quite make him jump, but he stiffens for a moment and doesn't look back at her; she slides through the window and comes to stand beside him, leaning against the railing and letting her too-long sleeves dangle over the edge.

She can see him side-eye her, taking another drag of his cigarette and letting the smoke dissipate into the air, "shouldn't be askin' me that."

She frowns, "of course I should. You saw it all too."

"I'm the adult here," he grunts, tapping his cigarette and watching the ash fall the several stories to the ground.

She knows he's not used to this, even after over a week of watching her, Glenn came over and Mr Cameron occupied her enough at work for him to feel just enough responsibility over her that he thought he was capable of. Now everyone's gone and it's just them, she doesn't know how to handle this any more than he does, but she knows he wouldn't wish for her to be stuck with anyone else, not really.

He sighs, "I'll find yer mom,"

"I know you will," she holds up her pinkie, "but don't leave me trying to do that."

They make a minute of eye contact before he reaches back.

**~ • ~**

Sophia sits under the overhang of the RV as people help the Atlanta group unload their stuff and sort through it. Carl took his parents back to their tent, the group letting them because they need the time alone, the time to talk and to cry and to hug in the only private place available.

She casts a glance at Shane, shotgun over her shoulder and pointing people to where they need to put everything; there's a rigidness about him now, his shoulders held up by a wire with no means of cutting. Nobody at camp has said anything, Carl wouldn't dare to yet, but Shane's relationship with Mrs Grimes hangs in the air above everyone, Sophia thinks Mr Grimes will catch on at some point if he's anything like Carl.

Glenn appears at her side out of nowhere, hair wet from a quick, makeshift shower, and a baseball-tee and jeans thrown onto his person; he grins, dropping his backpack next to her and lowering himself to sit opposite it and her, arms behind his back.

"So, I got you a present."

She squints at him, "uh-huh." She can see the silver end of a bat peeking over his shoulder and bites her tongue to stop from smiling.

"I want you to know I went through a lot of effort getting this thing after forgetting it every other time I've gone down, so you owe me." He's putting on that voice, the voice he does when he doesn't mean something but is absolutely about to suggest something she'll roll her eyes and agree to anyway.

Folding her arms, she raises an eyebrow, "like what?"

He pulls the bat out and presents it to her like a valuable sword, "like never coming near me when you're wielding this thing unless it's to save my ass from a geek," she snorts and he looks up, still grinning and nodding towards his bag, "also, look in there."

She pulls the bag towards her and opens it up, reaching inside to pull a moleskin notebook into her hands, cover dirtied by dust and long-set debris. She sends a confused look to Glenn and his smile softens.

"Carl gave you a flower the day we showed up, didn't he?" She nods, "I remember you had a scrapbook of all the things you collected… figured you could start a new one instead of hiding them in that heavy thing."

Sophia did have a scrapbook- well, _had_ , it had tons of pressed wildflowers from Daryl and movie receipts she'd kept from the times Glenn took her out, she'd decorated the pages with markers and stickers she borrowed at school and dated each thing from where she got it. It had been like a diary, just less likely to make her think about her feelings of the day… the fight that landed them in the hospital was because her dad had found it. It ended up in a bonfire.

She runs her hand over the first blank page, she can do that again, and this time she won't lose it.

Rushing up to her feet, she yells across camp, "Dale!" Loudest she's ever been at camp if _everyone_ staring at her means anything. The man looks over though, a curious smile pulling at his face as she tries to force the flush away from her cheeks, "do you have tape?"

He makes no move to get closer, just swings his rifle over his shoulder and grins a little more freely before yelling back, "what kind?"

Glenn is snickering from where he's sat - if he was wearing his hat she'd steal it, but it must be back in their tent - and even Shane, in his wound-up, tense state is holding in a laugh. If she were younger, or in a different situation, she might think too hard about them laughing at her, but they're not really laughing _at_ her, she knows that, Glenn giggled that bit of self-consciousness out of her before her tenth birthday.

"Just normal!"

She gets a general wave at the RV, "top drawer of the bedside table in the back!"

"Thank you!"

* * *

She sees Carl again when he and his parents come to the firepit for dinner. He makes a beeline for her - curled up in Glenn's lap - with his blanket in hand and bounces impatiently as his mom properly introduces his dad to all the adults (except her dad, sat by his own fire with that permanently pinched expression of his).

"Dad c'mon," he whines, making the others already settled around the fire smile at him.

Mrs Grimes lingers by Eliza and Louis' mom as Mr Grimes splits and wanders over with a light chuckle. Glenn slides them slightly further down the log to give Mr Grimes room to sit down, only readjusting afterwards so Carl's offered half of his blanket covers Sophia once the other boy's settled in his dad's lap; the man holds him as tight as Carl held him earlier.

"You must be Sophia," Mr Grimes says, smiling at her, "Glenn told me a bit about you, was pretty adamant on getting back to you."

Carl makes an almost-offended noise in the back of his throat, "Glenn! I wanted to introduce them!"

Glenn splutters for a second, "you still can! What did you want me to do? _Not_ give the best reason for him to get me outta that city alive?"

"Yeah but she's _my_ friend."

"And she's _my_ sister, I win."

She rolls her eyes but feels that little soft flutter she always gets when Glenn calls her that, he doesn't say it out loud very often - doesn't need to - but when he does it's always nice.

(She's never had a sibling, let alone a brother. If her mom had had a child before Sophia, she probably wouldn't have had Sophia at all, because after Sophia she'd decided she wasn't going to have any other kids with Sophia's dad. Even before her mom's last threads of confidence were broken, she wouldn't have been able to have kids with anybody else anyway.)

"Neither of you win anything," she huffs, watching Carl pout dramatically and lean back against his dad (who's been smiling at the whole scene while the others gather) and not needing to look to know Glenn's making the same expression. She turns back to Mr Grimes and can't help but feel at ease with how similar he seems to Carl, she holds out her hand, "it's nice to meet you, Mr Grimes."

He frees an arm wrapped around Carl and shakes hers, "you can call me Rick, Sophia, it's lovely to meet you in person."

The others settle amongst the fire, families wrapped around each other after days apart, and Shane goes to handing out dinner - the last of the squirrel broth Daryl had begrudgingly taught Amy how to cook the first time he brought squirrel back from his hunts. Sophia will never say it's her first choice of food when Daryl brings anything back, but it's something and it's warm, and that feels like it'll be a commodity in the world real soon.

Stories are shared over food as they normally are, Andrea smiling at Sophia across the fire as she tells the group how Glenn scared the shit out of them by disappearing for a few hours just to get Sophia's presents; T-Dog adds his own tidbits to the story since Glenn had nearly barrelled right into him on his way back to the first place they'd hidden out in.

At some point the empty bowls are collected and a few people splinter off to go to bed, Carl and Sophia end up with their heads on their respective guardians' lap and the shared blanket up to their shoulders. Then the attention drifts to Rick, someone asks him how it was waking up to such a difference in absolutely everything around him, and Carl's hand immediately finds hers under their cover.

Sophia can't even imagine what anyone would do in Rick's position, he describes the feeling of disorientation, of waking up in that hospital with his wound still burning and his body so low on nutrients he could barely hold his own weight or travel very far without needing to lean on something. Everything in the counties outside of Atlanta had fallen so fast it had almost been too much for Sophia to pick up on, her life having taken a more drastic turn than normal _already_ and now this new thing that wouldn't just go back to normal after a couple weeks away from her mom; it's almost been a month and a half already.

"Mom said you died," Carl mumbles, looking up at his dad with those snow-globe-glimmering eyes.

Rick runs a hand through the boy's hair, tilting his head to look at Mrs Grimes for a moment, "she had every reason to believe that. Don't you ever doubt it."

"When things started to get really bad, they told me at the hospital that they were gonna medevac you and the other patients to Atlanta, and it never happened," Mrs Grimes says.

Glenn hums, running his fingers through Sophia's hair absentmindedly, "by the time they said that, Atlanta would've been evacuating."

Glenn doesn't talk about what he saw in the city those days before he had to get out. When he stumbled upon Daryl and Sophia on the roof of a gas station off the side of a quiet road a week and a half after Atlanta fell, he'd cried more than she'd ever seen him cry before; he was covered in old, dark bloodstains and had a weathering backpack hanging from his shoulders with enough food to feed the three of them for a few days. She remembers his nightmares too, he never talked about them either, but he held her when she was having one, so it only made sense to hold him while he was having one too - Daryl has nightmares, but Sophia knows when not to ask, and she so rarely does.

Dale's voice brings her out of her thoughts, "have you given any thought to Daryl Dixon? He won't be happy to hear his brother was left behind."

She shifts a little, squeezing Carl's hand as she pipes up, "he knows Merle better than anyone, how he'll react depends on how you guys tell him."

"I'll tell him," T-Dog says, casting her a glance, "I dropped the key. It's on me."

Rick shakes his head, "I cuffed him. That makes it mine."

"We could lie?" Amy asks.

"That'll just make him pissed," Glenn sighs, "besides, as much as Merle and I dislike each other, Daryl's not a guy who's trust I wanna lose. Someone has to tell him, and, to be honest, your best bet there is me or Sophia."

"I was scared and I ran," T-Dog grumbles, "I'm not ashamed of it."

Andrea looks to be holding off on rolling her eyes, "we were all scared. We all ran. What's your point?"

"I stopped long enough to chain that door. Staircase is narrow. Maybe half a dozen geeks can squeeze against it at any one time. It's not enough to break through that… Not that chain, not that padlock. My point… Dixon's alive and he's still up there, handcuffed on that roof. That's on us."

Sophia's not sure if that'll go down better or worse with Daryl… probably worse.

* * *

"And Daryl's not gonna be mad we're borrowing one of his knives?"

Carl looks between her and the flip-knives in their hands, biting his lip and looking off towards camp; the two of them haven't wandered off like this since that first time where Mrs Grimes got mad, but she'd seen them cross the treeline (she didn't see the knives, obviously, but still) so it's not like they're missing.

"If I puppy-eye him he'll be over it immediately," she shrugs, "besides, I think he'd rather we borrow it to learn how to use it than to play with it."

He holds up the blade with a smile, "and we match now."

She giggles, "yeah."

She tries to channel her inner Daryl while teaching him, walking him through some basic safety the Dixon had drilled into her the first couple times he practised with her in the cleared space of his apartment living room, some of the tips he'd given Glenn while they were still holed up on that gas station rooftop.

"Most of the walkers we'll run into are gonna be bigger than us until we get older," she says, waiting for Carl to nod before she folds away her knife into her back pocket and grabs her bat leaning up against a tree, "so Daryl always said it's important to either have high ground or have something that'll get their heads down to our heights."

"How'd you do that before?" Carl asks.

"Daryl used to shoot them in the knees when I was practising."

A twig snaps amongst the trees. Sophia's grip on her bat tightens and she takes a few steps back from the line of bushes it sounded like it came from, motioning for Carl to do the same on his side; they have a wide enough gap between them that whatever may stumble out of those woods can't touch either of them straight away, but there's not enough space between them to feasibly stop one from getting to the other should they need it. Carl's hand is white with how tight he's gripping his knife, and Sophia doesn't need to look down to know both of hers are probably the same - unless it's a walker with the softest head imaginable, Sophia's not in the position to get rid of anything, just give Carl a chance to do it instead.

Their anxieties prove to be pointless when a deer tumbles from the bushes, dead already with a bolt through its neck and two in one of its hind legs. The pair of them stare, a little thrown off, Carl dropping his shoulders and flitting his eyes between her and the deer while she taps her bat into the ground and cranes her neck to look into the woods the way it came.

Carl squints at the tail-ends of the arrows, "are those Daryl's?"

 _Then_ the walker shows up. Accompanied by a travelling band of rustling leaves and it's own groaning, the thing pitches over the bushes and almost falls right on her. A startled yelp escapes her throat before she can stop it, her arms swinging down to knock it into the dirt and, more importantly, away from her; she thinks she calls out for Carl but her eyes have squeezed themselves shut long before she hears the squelch of the boy's knife entering the walker's skull.

"Did we get it?" She squeaks, peaking out of one eye and keeping her arms raised to hit it again.

Carl, panting, takes a couple steps back, "I think so."

They exchange wide eyes and slightly-hysterical laughs, looking down at the still walker and Sophia giving it a risky, experimental, kick in the side. It doesn't move. At least it's _dead_ dead.

"Well, hell."

Her head whips up, trying to stamp down the overexcitement at seeing Daryl come up the dirt path out of the woods, she can't run at him like she did Glenn, but bouncing on her heels should tell him enough.

His crossbow is at his back, his only bolt not in the deer in his hand. He looks at the two of them, eyes finding the knife (still covered in walker brains) in Carl's hand but barely paying it a second of attention before waving his bolt between the two of them and the walker on the ground between them.

"You two do that?"

She shrugs one shoulder, leaning her weight on her bat in front of her, "saved your deer."

"Yeah," he steps over the walker to reach the animal, and pull his other bolds out of it, "good job."

Carl beams at her, she offers something similar back. But then she remembers that Daryl doesn't know about Merle and she bites her lip, looking towards the hunter as he mumbles to himself and ghosts a bolt over the top of the deer, mapping a path for cutting it up.

"Daryl…" she takes a tentative step forward, he looks back at her, eyebrows knitting together because she's not usually _this_ … careful around him (not anymore), "so the Atlanta group came back."

He takes a step away from the deer to turn to her fully, his grip on his bolt is tighter than it was before and she does her best to maintain solid eye contact; Carl in her peripherals looks between them.

"Gonna take a wild guess and say somethin' happened?" She nods. "You ain't too upset. Merle dead?"

She inhales, "they… don't know."

The grip on his arrow, if even possible, gets tighter. He takes a deep, controlled breath and chews at the skin around his thumb for a second before pointing the bolt at her, "they can tell me what happened themselves, ain't lettin' 'em use ya jus' t' hide from me."

She wants to tell them they didn't send her, that she just wanted to tell him herself before anyone else made the stupid decision to do it when she wasn't around and get themselves in a fight, but she knows when he's barely holding everything down and if he wants someone to be mad at, she'll let it be the adults that did this in the first place.

He's not about to throw any punches with her on his tail like this - she's fully prepared for him to be yelling in a few minutes, because his normal outlet would be to go shoot some squirrels and he already has a dozen of them hanging from a rope around his torso, she's not about to let him out of her sight just yet.

"C'mon," he mutters, directing her and Carl to come around the deer, "help me drag this thing back t' camp."

Carl wanders over and seems at a loss with himself between looking at the deer and the knife still in his hand. Daryl takes it out of his hand and wipes it clean on the end of his shirt before flipping it closed and giving it back, Carl looks at her and she mimes shoving it in her front pocket until he nods and mimics the movement.

They flit around each other quietly, Daryl giving quick instructions before hoisting the deer's front legs over his shoulder, he holds his hand out until Sophia passes her bat over to free up her hands to wind around the hind legs with Carl, getting all of the weight off the ground.

(She knows full well Daryl could have done this himself, but he has a tendency to like letting her - and, more recently, Carl - feel more useful than maybe she normally would be in an area she's not very experienced in.)

They walk the short trail back to camp, catching the attention of almost everyone as they come up the short incline and cross towards the Dixon-Rhee-Sophia side of camp to drop the game off to be gutted later. Daryl leaves his crossbow with all of it too, brushing himself off and nudging her and Carl towards the main area before he decides to lead the way.

"Y'all gotta stop leavin' the damn kids alone out here," he huffs, anger leaking out of just that little sentence directed at camp, though mostly Mrs Grimes, "fuckin' walker nearly got its teeth into ma damn deer _an_ ' them."

Several people make very distinct noises of shock, a few ready to ask about the walker - the first that's gotten up here since this whole thing started, they're all aware - but Mrs Grimes' eyes go wider than Sophia's seen them before and she rushes over to Carl to crouch by him and check him over.

" _W_ _hat_!? Baby are you okay?"

"I'm fine, mom, we took care of it," Carl answers, sounding too close to rolling his eyes than he probably should be.

People look over at Daryl who simply raises his hands, "was all them, little sloppy but the thing came outta nowhere and the kid ain't had much practice."

"He doesn't need _practice_ ," Mrs Grimes hisses, snatching the knife out of Carl's front pocket like it was burning him and standing to shove it back into Daryl's hands, "we can take care of them."

"That's what'll get 'em killed," Daryl snarls back, perfectly content to give the knife back to Carl, who shoves it into the back of his jeans and backs up towards Sophia before his mom can get any closer.

Daryl side-steps to come to the middle of the path towards them and raises his voice a little louder to address the rest of camp.

"Now does one o' you assholes wanna tell me exactly what happened to ma brother?"

Shane bites the bullet first, walking up with his hands on his hips, "there was a… there was a problem in Atlanta."

"Been told," Daryl decides to glare, "want an explanation without y'all usin' ma girl to pass it along."

"We didn't send her."

"Sure."

Sophia bites her lip, hoping Shane will pick it up and stop talking like that because it sets Daryl off more than she's sure it should. Rick comes over soon after, hands kept at his sides besides a small elbow to Shane's side on his way past.

"No easy way to say this, so I'll just say it-"

"Who're you?" With Rick's answer comes a look in Carl's direction, "you're the kid's dad. You got my answers?"

"Your brother was a danger to us all, so I handcuffed him on a roof, hooked him to a piece of metal. He's still there."

"Let me process this." Daryl grits out between his teeth, taking a few steps back, "you're saying you handcuffed my brother to a roof and you left him there?!"

She cringes, there's the yelling.

Rick, to his credit, doesn't seem phased, nodding, "yeah."

Daryl's feet shift and Sophia, if she's honest, panics a little, darting forward and grabbing his hand with both of hers. The arm she holds loosens immediately, Daryl looking down at her with a sheen of frustrated sadness in his eyes - just like their first night back at his apartment - he gives her hands a squeeze before pulling out of her grip and laying his hand on her head, running gentle circles along her hairline.

"Talk." The word is ground out through his teeth, the hand at his side clenching and unclenching.

Rick gives them a look, curious yet understanding, before he exhales, "what I did was not on a whim. Your brother does not work and play well with others."

Daryl knows this, Sophia knows he's known long enough for him to have never let her meet him until she had to. Knew this when they'd pulled him from that jail and gave him a long talk about what he could and couldn't do or say to Glenn, to Sophia, around either of them. Despite popular belief, Daryl's not Merle, and he's not an idiot either, he has the loyalty a brother would have, but he knows Merle's faults better than anyone here ever could. And maybe that's why whatever fight that's built up in him leaves - not visibly to the others, but visible to Sophia.

It's also probably why he listens relatively quietly to T-Dog explaining what happened to the key and what he did after, very few interjections escaping him with half of his focus being on keeping himself as calm as possible with Sophia so close.

(She may or may not have figured this tactic out when Daryl had first found out about what happened to her mom. He doesn't hug, so they'd surprise him too much, but grabbing his hand means he has to ease up because he knows he's stronger than she is and he doesn't even like the thought of hurting her. He then gets to decide what he does, and, usually if he wants to calm down - or knows he should - he'll keep her nearby so he's aware of what his body is doing. He's only ever pulled away from her completely once, she doesn't know what he did but Glenn had spent that day with her and Daryl came back in time for dinner.)

"Just tell me where he is so that I can go get him."

"He'll show you," Mrs Grimes cuts in, casting a pointed look to Rick, "isn't that right?"

"I'm going back," Rick nods, looking to Mrs Grimes, Carl, and Daryl.

Mrs Grimes shakes her head and stalks off with nothing more.

For the next hour, Daryl has Sophia and Glenn help him with the deer. It's a messy process, one that once upon a time, Sophia would have been very adamant avoiding, but the three of them get it done as efficiently as they can, wrapping and tossing chunks into the cooler they keep the squirrel meat, and hanging a few out to dry out and save for the long-term food stock they've been growing.

Then they take turns cleaning up and getting out of their dirty clothes, Glenn tossing on another flannel-t-shirt combo while Daryl just wipes down his arms and calls it a day, marching off to clean his crossbow by the main firepit.

Sophia pulls on a clean pair of jeans and a t-shirt, shrugging on one of Glenn's flannels to cover her arms and coming out of the tent just as Rick gets to the main fire with his police uniform back on. She and Glenn cross camp as Shane and Rick are exchanging a few words, Mrs Grimes watching them with Carl standing beside her.

There's a tense moment, many people gathered because Rick's exact plan isn't very clear, Mrs Grimes voices this quickly, looking between her husband and Daryl with pursed lips.

"So you and Daryl, that's your big plan?"

There's a beat, a minute where Rick shifts his weight between his feet before he sucks it up and looks over to Glenn.

"Oh, come on," he sighs, resigned because Sophia knows in his head he's already agreed.

Rick gives him a pleading look, "you know the way. You've been there before, in and out, no problem. You said so yourself. It's not fair of me to ask, I know that, but I'd feel a lot better with you along. I know she would too."

Shane looks close to throwing his hands up, "that's just great. Now you're gonna risk three men, huh?"

"Four," T-Dog throws in from the side, fiddling with something in his hands.

Sophia can't stop herself, she balls her hands into fists beneath her sleeves and grits out, "five."

Shane whirls on her, "no way in hell."

"I'm not staying here without them," she argues, her mind not lost on the way her feet move backwards by themselves.

Shane doesn't seem to notice though, he's already wound up and apparently, she hasn't helped, "you are a _kid_ , you listen to the people trying to take care of you and you don't get to be an idiot and volunteer for suicide runs."

"Watch yer mouth, asshole," Daryl growls, shoving Shane without much strength but enough to push the guy off balance a bit, "you don't get to talk to her like that."

"Then maybe you shouldn't go takin' her out into the damn woods, you're gonna get 'er killed."

"She taught yer boy how t' save his own ass earlier." Whatever pride Sophia may have felt is squashed just by the argument alone. "Where'd she learn that? Oh yeah: _me_. Y'all keepin' yer damn purities is what's gonna get those two killed, not them learnin' some basic survival skills."

Shane finally does throw his hands up, her feet move back again, "so what? You're fine with your little girl wanderin' into that city with you?"

Daryl huffs, "of course I ain't."

"What!?" She finds her voice again, but it's strained and scratchy and her eyes already feel wet.

"I said what I said."

She inhales, eyes stinging, and turns her attention to Carl who almost immediately springs away from his mom to grab her hand and start jogging away from the scene.

"C'mon," he says quietly, "let's go back to my tent."

One way or another, that _going back to the tent_ turns into _let's hide in the truck_ amidst everyone moving around and getting ready for the group's departure. It shouldn't really be as easy as it is for them to clamber into the back of the truck and bury themselves between the small stack of supplies

They curl a little smaller when they hear voices outside. It's Daryl and Glenn, she'd recognise them even if there was six feet of concrete between them.

"You seen 'er?" Daryl asks. Sophia has the tense moment of knowing they're talking about her.

"No," Glenn says, probably shaking his head, "she might've gone for a walk by herself or with Carl or something, she was pretty upset." 

"She'll get over it."

"Look, man, I know you're not happy with yourself right now, but is leaving without even saying anything properly a good idea?" 

"She needs time to cool off, an' so do I," something is thrown into the back of the truck, probably his crossbow, "this ain't gon' take that long, so when we get back, we can talk to 'er." 

She isn't sure how long they stay hidden, listening to the conversations outside of the truck and trying not to shift too much as Glenn and T-Dog climb into the back with Rick driving and Daryl in the passenger seat. The floor beneath them rumbles along with the engine, any other time she might have been lulled into a light sleep, but she's wound tight and she's focusing far too much on Carl beside her and the thankful fact she left her very obvious, and very hard to hide bat back in her tent.

Their discovery comes thanks to a pothole that knocks Carl's head back against the floor and doesn't provide enough noise to drown out his groan. There's a shift in the back of the truck and Sophia gets her grimace out before steeling her features and facing the music.

"Oh, you have _got_ to be kidding me." The look on Glenn's face upon pulling back their cover will make her laugh when she looks back on this day, he pinches the bridge of his nose and turns towards the front, "we have stowaways."

" _What_?" Rick hisses, looking in the rearview mirror and seeing their far from sheepish expressions, "Carl?!"

The truck is pulled over instantly, the engine turned off and the atmosphere in the vehicle a strange mix of tense, frustrated, and concerned. Daryl gives her a look, one he doesn't give often, and one she has to fight with herself to maintain eye contact with.

"Why did I not think y'would do this?"

She folds her arms, fingers brushing against the handle of her knife stuffed in her jeans, "I told you I wasn't staying without you."

"I didn't want you or her to leave me," Carl adds upon Rick's attention turning to him.

There's a sigh, "what was wrong with staying with your mom and Shane?"

"Plenty," Carl huffs, crossing his arms and barely holding back from rolling his eyes, "that's a completely different conversation anyway."

"I agree, is there something you wanna tell me?"

"Not right now. We're already half-way, let's just go get Merle and go back. You can yell at me later."

Daryl gives her another glance, pointing at her in a way where she knows he really wants to yell again but is holding himself back, "we are havin' a long conversation when we get back, girl."

"I can live with that," she mutters.

Glenn, ever the eye for optimism, leans back against the side of the truck and looks across all of them, "family road trip?"

She hears T-Dog mutter something under his breath - something along the lines of wondering why he even volunteered - before she settles against the back of Daryl's seat and tries to avoid feeling like she's done something wrong.

The rest of the ride is a tense length of silence. Sophia has to feel bad for T-Dog, caught between all this with very little way of breaching the overhanging disagreements waiting to happen if anyone says anything too early. 

Glenn only ends up breaking the silence to give Rick the directions to his usual entrance to the city, the truck pulling up in a quiet area under an overpass. Everyone gets out of the truck at their own little pace, huddling up at the back as the men grab their weapons and look between each other.

Carl sucks in a breath and darts towards Glenn to wind his arms around him in a hug, "I didn't thank you before," he mumbles into the other boy's torso, "for saving my dad."

Glenn's eyebrows furrow, as do Rick's, but there's a softness to the officer's expression as he looks at his son, "how did you-"

"Sophia said that you would, says you're lucky."

Eyes turn to her and she allows herself a small smile, "he finds people when he needs to."

That sets something at ease, Rick nodding resolutely and starting towards the wire fences down the path. Glenn rushes forward to start pulling it open the way he usually would. Rick sets his hands on hers and Carl's shoulders, stopping them before they can climb through the fence and crouching down to their level.

"Wherever we go, you two stay in the middle," he says, using that tone of voice that Sophia knows means every word he's saying is to be taken seriously, "you do not run ahead, you do not hang back. We enter a building you ready your knives and you _stay close_. Am I making myself clear?"

The two of them nod, Sophia looking across at Daryl and trying not to find any minute details that he's about ready to burst with the amount of emotions he's been bottling up all day. 

He looks back at her and shrugs, "ain't gonna say nothin' different, jus' stay where I can see ya."

With that sorted, they slide through the fence and break out into a jog towards the city, Glenn and Rick leading the way with T-Dog and Daryl keeping up the rear. 

Rick "Merle first or guns? You know the geography, it's your call."

Glenn spares a glance back at the rest of them, "Merle's closest. The guns would mean doubling back. Merle first."

Their jog becomes far more of a run.

* * *

They make it back to the department store as fast as possible, entering in through the way the group escaped last time. On the way through the bottom floor, Daryl takes out a lingering walker and Glenn ushers them through the building as quietly as possible. 

Sophia tries to be aware of her every step in a way she's only ever been when her dad came home in a bad mood - the consequences of being caught are hardly on par, but they feel like they are to her. 

They find the staircase to the roof fairly easily, no more walkers in their path and very few things that could accidentally make any noise. T-Dog rushes up first, tools in hand, with Daryl following behind and the rest scrambling after; the padlock is cut through and pulled away from the door as fast as T-Dog can manage.

They burst out onto the roof, Daryl calling out for Merle but the name dies on his tongue the second he sees something. Merle isn't there but- Carl gags, shoving past Glenn behind them to throw up between the entrance door and the pipes running across the roof. Sophia's mouth drops open, her hand coming up to cover it immediately, she feels numb, numb in place of Daryl who lets out the worst wail she's ever heard from him; Rick slips past her to check on Carl, and Glenn and T-Dog don't seem to know what to do with themselves. They're all staring at the same thing.

The saw lying on the ground. 

The bloody, empty handcuffs. 

Merle's hand, but no Merle.

One way or another... he got himself out.

Sophia can't say she liked Merle by any means, they had their moments like any normal duo stuck with each other, he scared her more often than he made her laugh or taught her new things. But he still did those things, and in a way, he knew why she was scared of him, knew to keep his distance unless he was completely out of it. Despite all that Merle was- _is_ \- despite it all, she wouldn't wish this kind of desperation on anyone.

She blinks back to the present, forcing her attention away from the abandoned limb and looking towards Daryl. He's walked himself away from the scene, leaning back against the wall around the edge of the roof with his head between his arms, that rest on his knees, and his shoulders heaving. 

It doesn't take much deliberation for her to duck around T-Dog and go over, making her steps loud enough for him to hear; he doesn't look up but his shoulders stop moving so heavily.

She settles on the ground in front of him, crossing an ankle under her thigh and stretching her other leg out to nudge his shin gently.

"We'll find him," she offers softly, "he's tough, right?"

He gives a non-committal hum and she shuffles a bit closer, crossing her legs so her knees touch the backs of his ankles. 

"I'm glad you got that out," she tries again, pulling her sleeves over her hands to avoid overthinking on what to do with them, "was getting worried you were holding too much in."

"Woulda been better if someone stayed where they were supposed t'." He speaks into the floor, probably trying to sound angrier than he is at this point, but she nudges him again anyway.

"I know. I'm sorry." She means it.

He sighs, picking his head up and resting his chin on his intertwined fingers, his eyes are red but she has a feeling that's been more from him rubbing at them than him actually crying. 

"You feelin' alright?"

"This isn't about me."

"Yer the priority, y'know that."

"I'm fine," she murmurs, leaning back, "I don't... I don't really know how to feel right now."

He nods, taking one final swipe at his eyes before waving her backwards and hauling himself to his feet, offering her his hand to pull her up after him, "c'mon, before they look at me weird."

She snorts, "I think they already are."

"Hush."

Carl offers her a meek smile as they come back over, standing by his dad and looking a bit embarrassed (as if throwing up seeing a dismembered hand for the first time isn't normal). 

Daryl, a master at pretending his emotional outbursts never actually happened, goes into his ramblings immediately, getting a do-rag from T-Dog to wrap up Merle's hand and shove it into the top of Glenn's backpack - the two look equally uncomfortable about the whole thing but they push through it anyway. He points out the blood trail, the likelihood of Merle's fashioning a tourniquet out of his belt given how much more blood there would have been if he didn't.

He goes to follow the trail, Sophia following behind him with the others catching up with the rest of Dale's tools in hand; Carl stays with Rick, so Sophia knows he's safe, but she looks back every so often just to make sure. 

They cross across the roof and descend a set of stairs, risking a few calls for Merle as they make their way into a floor of offices. Daryl takes out another walker with his crossbow, and the others file in as he points out the two dead walkers already there.

"Had enough in him to take out these two sumbitches. One-handed," he says, setting down his bow to reload, "toughest asshole I ever met, my brother. Feed him a hammer, he'd crap out nails"

Rick hums, guiding Carl towards Sophia with a quick nod in her direction, he takes the lead when she nods back and grabs Carl's hand, "any man can pass out from blood loss, no matter how tough he is."

They clear more rooms on their sweep through the building, Daryl barely holding himself back from calling out for Merle some more despite the walkers that are probably in this building with them. Sophia and Carl poke their heads through some passing rooms, trying to spy anything of interest before Glenn and/or T-Dog guides them through to the next room.

Eventually, they come upon a kitchen, a burnt smell lingering in the ar as they spy a lit stove and a belt thrown on top of it, beside the fires is some sort of steel iron, a patch of something stuck to it; Glenn grimaces, pointing at it with the question on the tip of his tongue.

"Skin," Rick answers before he can speak, looking as apologetic as he can for Glenn's thick swallow and Carl's second gag (though thankfully he manages to keep his stomach contents down), "he cauterized the stump."

"Told you he was tough," Daryl hums, crossing the room to look for any more signs of Merle's presence, "nobody can kill Merle but Merle."

"Don't take that on faith. He's lost a lot of blood"

"Yeah? Didn't stop him from busting out of this death trap."

They come to a smashed window, Merle must've climbed out onto the fire escape and made his way down. The blood on the outside windowsill still looks wet, he was here recently.

Glenn studies the window and the drop from the fire escape with a grimace, "he left the building? Why the hell would he do that?"

"He thought you weren't coming back for him," Sophia states, because no one that thought they were going to be rescued would go through all this, "he was desperate enough to get himself out, add the blood loss, possible sunstroke, maybe the start withdrawal. He's probably barely keeping it together."

T-Dog looks almost horrified, "so he's just wandering out in the streets, maybe passing out? What are his odds out there?"

"No worse than being handcuffed and left to rot by you sorry pricks," Daryl growls, "you couldn't kill him. Ain't so worried about some dumb dead bastard."

Rick steps up, getting between Daryl and the smashed window, "what about 1,000 dumb dead bastards? Different story?"

"Jus' let me go after ma fuckin' brother, would ya!?"

"I don't blame you. He's family, I get that. I went through hell to find mine. I know exactly how you feel. He can't get far with that injury. We could help you check a few blocks around but only if we keep a level head, shouting is going to get us all killed."

There's a very pointed look in Sophia's direction and she fights the urge to look down.

T-Dog shifts his weight, folding his arms and jutting his chin in the direction of the street, "only if we get those guns first. I'm not strolling the streets of Atlanta with just my good intentions, okay?"

Which is how they find themselves surrounding a crudely drawn map of the surrounding blocks and Glenn running through the fastest plan he can come up within ten minutes. People have objections, questions, but Glenn fights for his idea - it's the best thing they've got - and eventually the others concede, T-Dog firing out one final question.

"And the kids?"

"Sophia's with Daryl, Carl's with you two."

And away they go.

Sophia slides down into the alley behind Glenn, Daryl dropping down behind her and starting to load his crossbow as Glenn sheds his backpack and flannel, doing a few quick stretches and giving his best reassuring smile towards Sophia.

"Be careful," Daryl orders, rough but concerned - this city almost took him once, Sophia doesn't know what she'll do if it tries to take him again.

A nod is given and then he slips out of the alley. 

There's hardly a second of nothing, she and Daryl are just waiting behind the trashcan when some kid younger than Glenn appears in the alley. He has the crossbow aimed at him without hesitation but the kid's mind works quickly and Sophia gets grabbed before she even sees him reach out; she attempts to keep her breathing normal, but she can feel she isn't doing that very well.

"Don't shoot me!" The stranger yells, "what do you want?"

"You let her go!"

The stranger cries something else, something loud and attention-grabbing for more than just the walkers. Sophia sucks in a breath then slams her heel into the kid's toes as hard a possible, freeing up an arm to grab her knife and jab it backwards into his leg. She escapes his grip but he knocks her down with a violent shove, sending her sprawling onto the pavement and grazing her palms; the stranger falls down behind her though, swearing up a storm and covering the wound on his leg - she can't believe she just did that.

She manages to scramble up to her feet and stumble towards the gate at the mouth of the alley. The kid's yelling louder and Daryl keeps screaming at him to shut his mouth but the commotion brings forward two new guys, much bigger, much older than the kid on the floor. They start attacking Daryl and Sophia can't stamp down the panicked scream this time.

Suddenly, Glenn slams into her back and the only reason she doesn't go falling forwards again is because he snags her around the waist with his arm. The men attacking Daryl look up at them, pointing at the bag of guns still in Glenn's hold and they charge at the two of them; Sophia ducks under one's swinging arm but the other manages to catch her around her stomach and haul her up as the other grabs Glenn, the bag of guns dropping onto the ground.

One of the men promptly gets a bolt stuck in him, but he's already shoved Glenn into the grip of the man refusing to let her go despite how much they both struggle and yell, and scream. A car pulls up on the road and Sophia can see the panic and frustration more openly on Daryl's face than she's ever seen it before, she wishes she could do more but she's so much smaller than either one of these guys and no amount of clawing is going to get them to drop her.

Glenn is shoved in the car first, Sophia thrown in after. The man Daryl shot rushes forward to shut the door, but before he does she's able to get a solid kick to his face when he bends down too far, she's more satisfied than she thinks she should be seeing the blood trickle from his nose.

Then they're off, taking her and Glenn from their group with way more of a fight than anyone was prepared for. 

Glenn wraps her up in his arms in the back of the car and whispers reassurances into her ear despite how shaky his own breathing is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, this chapter was supposed to go the then end of Vatos, but it was getting long and everything that I've moved into the next chapter matches the flower meaning there more than it does here. So, more substance for that chapter, we love to see it, though I will say next chapter will most likely not be as long as this one, still long, just not like this (however the one after that I can't promise shit).
> 
> Interact w/ me~! ^^
> 
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	4. Brugmansia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Brugmansia (Angel's Trumpet) • Flower of danger"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took me an embarrassingly long time to get through, but parts of it felt super slow and I ended up writing a bunch of scenes that needed to be put together with transition lines and paragraphs which are my NEMESIS; I hate those fuckers they make everything feel so stilted T^T
> 
> Silver lining... this chapter isn't as long as the last, but it'll probably be shorter than next chapter (which introduces my baby Maggie - I LOVE HER - and I'm hella excited to actually get around to it). I've allocated this fic/series to be my NaNoWriMo project, so even tho I have literal deadlines for MTH, FTH, and actual university - none of which I'm anywhere near touching (thanks ADHD) - I've been trying to allocate a bit of time every day to slowly chip away at this word count and get this fic sorted
> 
> Either way, enough of my ramblings

_All parts are considered dangerous, especially seeds and leaves. Like their relatives in the genus Datura and other toxic members of the nightshade family, they are rich in tropane alkaloids, including atropine, hyoscyamine and scopolamine. The very makeup of this plant has led many to easily associate it, simply, with danger._

* * *

Glenn doesn't let go of her for the whole ride, his arms wound around her stomach and pressing her up against his chest as he tries to keep his breathing at ease; the both of them still aren't very steady though, aren't sure they can be.

The men in the front keep talking to each other in Spanish, the man who seems to have gotten the brunt of everyone's attacks grumbling and leaning his head forward as blood pools out of his nose and into the hand covering it, he can't seem to sit comfortably either. Every time the driver looks back, Glenn's arms get tighter around her, she doesn't know if it's because he's scared or if it's because he's worried about her being scared… maybe both, she's definitely both.

The further they get into the city, the more nervous Sophia feels. Deeper city means more walkers, surely? but they circle quiet roads and swerve abandoned army blockades to come into an open parking lot from a tucked-away entrance.

Sophia can see a small set of buildings through the front window. One, a run-down factory, doesn't look the safest, but at the same time seems decent for storage or maybe casual meetings away from other members of the group; it's made of brick with smashed in windows and vines growing all around it's walls - something abandoned long before everything else was. There's an outdoor space, fenced off and protected, between the factory and the next building over, she can't tell from the outside what the other building is, just that most of the windows are boarded up and that's probably where the majority of this group sleeps no matter what it is.

A small group of other men come out from the side of the building, the two in the car climbing out and - given the state of one of them - the men wandering over move with more haste. Glenn tucks himself at Sophia's back, holding her in case these people grab at them again, and Sophia shifts to wind her leg back in case she's given an opening, her knife still folded and pressed into her side

The door in front of her is pulled open and the man in front - she assumes the leader - peers in with a less-than-pleased expression twisting his features.

"What the hell is this?" He turns to look at the men that brought them here, staring pointedly at the drying blood on the injured one's hand, "I sent you for guns, you come back bloody and with kids?"

"We got jumped, G," the injured one protests, shifting his weight off his bad leg, "they got people, their people got the guns so we got them."

Glenn bristles behind her at the _kid_ comment, meanwhile she huffs, "you jumped us! You're little buddy tried to hold me hostage already!"

_G_ tilts his head, appraising them, before stepping to the side of the door and pointing, "out."

Neither of them move, he repeats himself and Glenn shifts, and hisses, "we're not dogs."

"No, dogs are more obedient." He steps back towards the open door and crouches to look in better, the men who brought them here stepping up before he can get too much closer.

"Watch it," the uninjured one says, eyeing her warily, "she's a violent one. Gets it from that dad o' hers, I'll bet."

She glares, because it's the only thing she can do to not think too hard, she grinds out, "you don't even know my dad." Glenn's arms tightening around her further.

"It ain't that redneck asshole?" The injured man hisses, sounding similar to when someone would talk with a cold. Sophia glares harder and shakes her head, watching him look off to the side as if remembering their encounter, "sure acts like it."

"He's just protective," she says, "he's nothing like my dad, and neither am I."

Even the thought of being like him leaves a sour taste in her mouth, she can't be anything like him… right?

But she stabbed - _stabbed_ \- someone today, not to mention the kick to that guy's face. She felt like she had to, sure, but is that really an excuse? She's a Peletier by blood, whether she likes it or not, and even if her mom wins out in her more times than she can count, does that take away the parts of her that are inescapably her dad? With the way things are, is her mom going to win out anymore? Or is she going to start hurting the people around her too?

G orders them out again and this time she moves, because she doesn't know if she wants Glenn this close to her right now; after that it doesn't take much for Glenn to listen too, she doesn't look at his face though, doesn't know what she'll find if she does, doesn't know if she'll like it.

"Felipe, you said they got people?" G asks, only looking between the two of them curiously.

"Yeah," the injured man - Felipe - nods, only wincing slightly, "only saw one but I doubt three of 'em would come into the city alone."

There's a nod, a few words exchanged in Spanish across the gathering of men and then some wander away towards the factory swinging their weapons like they're bored, another takes Felipe off, presumably, to get his injuries cleaned and fixed up, then the leader looks back to them and the remaining man who'd driven them here.

"Jorge, if their men come knocking leave them in the courtyard," he then turns to them, "you two with me."

There's little argument about following after him; Glenn keeps close, his hands hovering around her but not touching. They circle to the gate G and his men came from, propped open by an ankle-height fence of wooden stakes tied with rotting rope and an overhanging wire of cans with what sounds like marbles rolling around inside them. They follow a thin dirt path along the side of the factory, passing a fire escape up to the roof and coming to a door with a faded _Staff Only_ sign tacked on the front of it.

Following him inside, they cut through the factory floor and come to the fenced outdoor area. G stops before the steps to the next building, turning to them and folding his arms, giving them a serious look.

“Now am I gonna have to take your weapons from you, or are you gonna keep your hands to yourself?” 

Glenn raises his arms in surrender, Sophia just nods once, he takes that as whatever, head tilting and chewing on the inside of his cheek before he pushes inside. 

It’s… honestly nowhere near what Sophia expected, they come into a straight hallway heading down to some auditorium at the end of the building, on either side doors head into different rooms and elderly people walk the halls as if nothing has changed - perhaps for them it hasn’t. 

“What is this place?” Glenn asks, side-stepping out of an old woman’s path.

G smiles a little, “old folks home. Our people.”

He leads them down the hallway, greeting the residents with quiet words and soft touches, completely different from the man he was outside. They come to some office, he makes them enter first, then closes the door behind him and leans back against the desk.

“You got names?”

Sophia shifts, “do you?”

“Guillermo.”

“Sophia.”

“...Glenn.”

Guillermo turns to grab a pen out of the pot on the desk, twirling it around his fingers and looking them over again in that assessing way he had outside, “you gonna answer my questions?”

Glenn folds his arms, positioning himself a little in front of Sophia and giving Guillermo his own assessing look, “depends, you gonna kill our guys?”

"Only if they make us, we need those guns."

"So do we," Sophia says, her hand resting at her hip, close to her knife, "you're not the only people left alive."

"No but we gotta act like it," Guillermo retorts, eyeing her carefully, "what happens if I let your group run off with all them guns, huh? How do I know you ain't gonna come back and take our shit?"

"How do we know you're not gonna come looking for us?"

Glenn sighs, fiddling with his hat, "it’s a two-way street, man. Look, Rick's a good guy, if you just be honest he's not gonna leave here without giving you something."

Guillermo clasps the pen tightly in a fist, hiding it away in folded arms, "and why would I trust a man that brought a kid into this city?" 

Sophia can’t resist rolling her eyes, "I brought myself actually. Got half-way when they found me in the truck, couldn't exactly turn around and take me back."

Their kidnapper doesn’t appear particularly convinced, though perhaps he’s just perturbed by her attitude, maybe he’s used to people cowering, used to people begging for their life, who knows.

There’s a knock on the door and she watches him cross the room to open it and greet an elderly man in a dressing gown muttering something in Spanish, Guillermo turns to them and points at Glenn.

"You. Go be useful." He jabs his thumb in the direction of the man.

The boy in question glares, sliding more solidly in front of her and opening his mouth to, most likely, retaliate. Sophia reaches out and touches his arm, making him soften and turn.

She offers her best reassuring smile, "it's okay, I'll come find you in a minute."

He closes his eyes and sighs, crossing the room and flashing a quick glare at Guillermo before following the elderly man down the hall.

"You and your people have been here the whole time, right?" Sophia asks once they’re alone again, Guillermo seems surprised she spoke up, but he shuts the door and leans back against it.

"We have. Why?"

"D'you know what happened to Grady?"

His gaze shifts towards the boarded windows, chewing the inside of his cheek again, "far as I know, only the people who could drag themselves out of the hospital when the dead got in escaped, everyone else is dead - now the Atlanta PD is on a power trip running the place.”

“Is that who you need the guns for?” She asks instead of mulling over the first part of his answer.

Guillermo shrugs, “not yet, might though. I wouldn’t head that way if I were you.”

"Wasn't gonna, just wondering."

"A'ight," he pushes away from the door and pulls it open again, "c'mon."

She follows him out and down to the auditorium, smiling a little at the elderly people who gush at her as she wanders past. Coming into the larger room she spots Glenn talking with a man and a few others, he looks relieved when he spots her, waving before getting drawn back into dealing with whatever he’s dealing with.

A trio of chihuahuas skitter across the floor, yipping around Guillermo and Sophia’s ankles excitedly. The older man leans down to pet each of them, he glances up at her to simply wave her away, so she wanders towards the stage and pulls herself up to sit on the edge of it, legs dangling over the edge. 

The fluffier, white chihuahua comes over curiously, ears tilting as it yips up at her; a younger man - one of Guillermo’s men, she assumes, drops the pup in her lap as he passes to talk to the man in charge, and he offers her a cheerful wink as he does it. She freezes a little, not expecting the action, and not expecting the dog to lick at her hand until she runs her fingers through its fur.

Sophia never had a dog, her dad always said they cost too much money, and when she’d been in charge of looking after the class rabbit she’d had to walk back into school with the bullshit excuse it’d escaped through a hole in her garden fence. Her classmates never forgave her for it, not like she had any friends in that class anyway, but still, it stung, and her teacher had given her that disappointed expression every teacher got when she wandered in with something to say about why she lost something, or forgot something, or couldn’t take her coat off, or whatever. They didn’t care, no one did until their trips to Atlanta got more frequent, even then nothing was done to help that her mom hadn’t started herself.

Thinking of her mom isn’t something she really wants to do, but her mind trails that direction anyway, and Sophia has to wonder if she got out at all. Her mom had been in Grady a week by the time everything got bad, she doesn’t know if her mom would’ve had the strength to get out herself, she sure as hell rarely had the strength for much. Sophia doesn’t know how many people would have a generous streak, how many people would actually be able to get her out; there’s a chance, but her mom’s weakness makes that chance slimmer than a sheet of paper, and Sophia isn’t sure she wants to hold onto that shred of hope for it to flourish into nothing.

(And she knows calling her mom weak isn’t fair, but they had and they took so many chances to get out and her mom still took her back, time and time again to an angry dad and a bedroom of missing things. Sometimes Sophia doesn’t care if she’s being unfair, because she got dragged around without much of a say; she knows her mom had too much trust in him, well, maybe not trust, fear is a better word, because if Sophia hadn’t had that same fear sitting deep in her bones she could have packed up and run away to live with Daryl or Glenn a long time ago.)

She sits there for a while, petting the dog as it settles in her lap and, eventually, starts snoring; she watches Glenn talk with the residents, talk with Guillermo and his men, and help out where he can. Every so often a resident will sidle up to her, making conversation because they haven’t seen a kid her age in a while; not knowing her grandparents, Sophia finds herself humouring the elderly’s conversations with soft smiles and the dog still happily sleeping in her lap.

Guillermo leaves after a while, nodding to those in the room and offering Glenn a firm handshake and a clap on the back before he disappears down the main corridor; Glenn’s cheeks burn red with shy pride and Sophia finds his smile contagious when he looks across the room and grins at her. 

She doesn’t sit there for much longer after that, her legs getting stiff and the dog eventually leaving her in favour of its bed with its friends. She pushes herself off the edge of the stage and stretches out stiff muscles, the quiet time was nice, but judging from the noise down the hall, that quiet time is coming to a swift end.

Daryl comes in first, his shoulders around his ears and his muscles coiled tight as he fights whatever instinct is trying to take over. Sophia crosses the room as fast as she can, giving him the chance to greet both her and Glenn at the same time; one hand on Glenn’s shoulder and the other cradling the back of her neck. His eyes flash between the two of them for a moment until they nod, he exhales and his shoulders drop.

T-Dog, Rick and Carl cross the threshold of the room together, their faces twisting in equal amounts of relief and curiosity. Carl splits from the others immediately, barrelling into her without giving her much chance to step away from Daryl; his arms wind around her torso and hers his shoulders and he squeezes her about as tightly as he had the day he heard Rick on the radio.

“What is all this?” T-Dog asks as he, Rick, and a reemerged Guillermo walk over. He looks around the room and waves, albeit somewhat awkwardly, at the staring elders.

Glenn smiles, “Guillermo and his people protect this place, everything was a bit of a misunderstanding.”

As Carl pulls away from her, quickly swiping at his eyes, Rick tilts his head towards Guillermo, “can I have a word with you?” He pulls the other man to one side of the room, the pair of them exchanging hushed words until Rick’s shoulders sag in some sort of sigh and he turns back to look towards the rest of them still surrounding each other.

T-Dog and Glenn start forwards, Daryl pausing beside her and Carl to nod down at them, “stay here, w'll be back in a minute.”

And then, as soon as they’d appeared, they’re gone again, back down the corridor and towards the office she and Glenn had started in. 

She exchanges a look with Carl and huffs, “one day they’ll let us in on these meetings.”

Carl laughs, “yeah, one day. What happened?”

“Don’t even get me started,” she groans, rattling off just about everything she’d done since they split off from each other: stabbing Miguel, the whole _kidnapping_ thing (she doubts Daryl’s about to let that go even if she and Glenn are okay), kicking Felipe in the face, the thing with those guys thinking Daryl was her dad.

Standing in the middle of this old people’s auditorium and ranting to who she supposes she can consider her best friend is strangely the most honest Sophia thinks she’s ever been to someone outside of her highly established inner circle. Perhaps that says something about Carl more than it does about her, but, it feels good to have someone like that, she might have had touch-and-go friends at school, but never someone she’d ever truly confide in.

“Daryl got _pissed_ ,” Carl says, laughing slightly - either about what happened or the fact he just cursed without his dad knowing, she doesn’t know - but he looks towards the hallways and rubs the back of his neck, “like, I thought he was gonna kill everyone pissed. I mean, taking Glenn was bad enough, but _you_ too? My dad was really holding him back, these guys could’ve been screwed!”

She snorts, “tell the next person who thinks of kidnapping us that and you might just save us the hassle.”

“Or we could avoid the whole kidnapping thing altogether? I was pretty freaked too.”

“That too… sorry.”

The next time the men return to the room, the gun bag is slightly emptier, Guillermo is scoring a freshly bruised cheek, and Daryl’s rubbing his knuckle against his other hand. So safe to say the meeting went well.

Guillermo walks them out with a handshake for Glenn, a wink to her, and a nod to Daryl.

They trek back to the van the way they came in, weaving between buildings through alleyways and fire escapes, downing walkers with their silent weapons and allowing them to make it back to the underpass they were first acquainted with. When they get to the wire fence, Glenn pulls it apart and she and Carl go through first, followed swiftly by Daryl and T-Dog.

Glenn lingers for a second, an amused glint in his eye as he watches Rick pull away his hat to slide through the fence, “admit it, you only came back to Atlanta for the hat.”

Rick snorts, “don't tell anybody.” He shifts the weight of the gun bag and pulls at the fence to allow Glenn to fit through.

They wander down the path beside the tracks, she and Carl kicking gravel and seeing how far they can make it go while T-Dog and Rick watch them with amusement dancing in their eyes, and Daryl has mumbled conversation with Glenn at the back of their line.

They make it back, faster than expected, to where they’d left the van, but whatever luck they’d held entering the city has leaked out as midday has bled into sunset, the orange casting fresh shadows into the empty spot where their escape had once been waiting.

Glenn stares wide-eyed, Sophia can’t help but swallow thickly, and Daryl growls lowly.

“Where the hell's our van?”

“We- We left it right here,” Glenn stutters, waving his hands in a wide gesture at the empty space, “who would take it?”

Rick sighs, “Merle.”

Something sinks into their bones, they _just_ missed him. That fact had been true when they’d found his hand on the roof, his blood and skin still fresh in that kitchen, that window busted open… but now, after all the stuff with Guillermo and the Vatos, they probably missed him by a hair. Sophia risks a glance towards Daryl and sees his hands tightly fisted around the strap of his crossbow.

“Is he gonna be taking some vengeance back to camp?” T-Dog asks, eyes as wide as Glenn’s now and near-frantically looking between both Rick and Daryl like either one of them knows what’s going on in Merle’s head.

She thinks about it for a moment, about how bad Merle must be - driving is probably one of the more dangerous things he could be doing but what else does she expect from him? - and about how he was before.

“I don't think he knows how to get up there from here,” she says, shaking her head, “we didn’t let him drive when it was just us, so he didn’t really pay attention to the paths and areas unless he had to.”

And that means he’s probably completely out of his mind driving barren streets and getting utterly lost while probably succumbing to whatever effects withdrawal and a likely infection from his hand wound are giving him. It’s not the prettiest thought, even where Merle’s concerned, but if they missed him in the city, there’s no possible way they can track him when he’s out on the road.

They’ve lost him.

Glenn looks towards the setting sun and the road ahead, heaving a giant sigh and letting his head drop to his chest, “this is gonna take hours.”

Daryl claps him on the shoulder and pushes to the front of the group, huffing out, “let's get our asses movin' then.”

Rick reaches out for Carl as he moves to follow, and Sophia crosses to clasp her hand around Glenn’s and keep them close to the others. Looking down at the roads glowing orange, she realises this _is_ going to take hours, and exhales a sigh herself.

* * *

They realise halfway up the hills that something isn't right.

Daryl finds walker tracks - more than one - dragged through the mud heading up towards camp, their pace picks up and the further they go, the more tracks they see. They crest a hill closer to camp and can see the glow of a fire burning longer and brighter than they've ever let one burn before, the noise traps this far out torn away from trees and in heaps on the ground; there are bodies too, walkers shot and stabbed and left to keep rotting without moving.

There are no words exchanged, Rick just bolts forward and the others follow, coming up into camp and meeting carnage. They're met with the gnawed face of Morales chewing into some of the deer meat they'd left hanging before their trip to the city, beside him, with a knife in her forehead and a bullet wound through his, are his wife and Louis. Sophia reaches back for Carl almost immediately, their hands intertwining as the group turns to survey the rest of camp.

Tents are toppled, the fire is crackling, more bodies litter the camp, and the RV is gone.

"Poor bastards," Daryl mutters, sending a bolt whizzing into Morales' head and leaving him to rest with one half of his family.

In the space left behind by the missing RV are four people: Amy, on the floor sobbing into her knees, Eliza, holding a cloth over her arm and looking numbly towards the hills, Jim, leaning back against Daryl's truck with sweat running down his brow, and Jacqui, hugging her arms around herself and mumbling prayers under her breath.

Rick takes an unsteady step forward, his foot meeting stray leaves and sending a deafening crunch through the silence. The remains look up, a series of emotions ranging from shock, anger, sadness, but overall relief, flooding their features as their eyes ghost the group, all of them alive and in one piece.

"What happened?" The question is strained, Sophia catches the sheen of tears in Rick's eyes from the glow of the fire.

Jacqui and Amy speak up at the same time, the former sounding lost and tired while the latter spitting out a name through a sob with such venom everyone but Daryl flinches.

"Walkers."

"Shane."

Eliza's numb expression morphs, blubbering as she shifts the cloth against her arm and Sophia catches sight of ugly, mangled skin, she got bit; judging by Jim's state, he did too. Everyone's movements are slow for a long moment, Rick drops the bag of guns by the fire as Carl leaves her side to curl into his, T-Dog crossing camp to hug Jacqui and Jim, Glenn slumps on a log by the fire and Daryl doesn't seem to know what to do.

"We were looking for the kids all day," Amy explains, inhaling shakily to try and tame her tears as she pushes herself to stand, wrapping her arms around herself like it'll hold her together, "I mean, you disappeared for  _ hours  _ and we know you like to play so we weren't worried until you didn't come back for lunch-"

"Lori wouldn't stop until we started searches," Jacqui picks up, cutting away from T-Dog and Jim as whatever memories plague Amy take over her voice, "couldn't find you in the woods, found most of your stuff in your tents. Dale suggested you two ran off with you guys, suppose he was right."

Jim coughs, dry and wheezing, he shifts only slightly but that gives the bite on his side ample time to breathe, it looks just as bad, if not worse, than Eliza's. He winces as if noticing he'd exposed it without even looking down, shifting to hide it again before looking apologetically at Rick, "I don't know what got into Shane, but he seemed pretty adamant on the idea y'all took the kids an' ran. Wanted to go after y'all the second the idea was brought up, but Lori kept her head, figured we should maybe widen our search in case the kids got lost trying to practice huntin'."

"Most of us split up," Amy says, "I wanted to be helpful but without much weapons training Andrea insisted I stay with Shane or something, so I did," Sophia sees her swallow, her hands clamping around her t-shirt as she glares at the woods, "then it got dark and the walkers came, he helped me into a tree so he could get rid of them, then he  _ left  _ me there and ran back to camp."

The survivors look amongst each other, Amy's gaze glossing over Jim as she sobs again - Sophia realises Jim must have gone to get her, and that's how he got bit. But Shane took off, taking Mrs Grimes, Andrea, Dale, all of them in the middle of the night on dark streets heading who even knows where… and none of them here now can follow. There's an exhaustion set deep in their bones that'll take hold the moment the adrenaline of everything wears off; wherever Shane is going, he's going to get pretty far before anybody here can even think of catching up.

She startles when a hand touches her shoulder, it's just Rick though, smiling softly through the utter heartbreak shining in his eyes. He ghosts his attention over the mangle of tents left behind and the vehicles they have left: Daryl's truck with Merle's bike, Shane's jeep, T-Dog's van, and the Morales family car.

"Sorry," he mumbles, squeezing her gently, "we're all going to sleep in the cars tonight, locked up and taken care of, we'll probably leave a little after dawn, so I need you to get what's important to you now in case the walkers come back, can you do that?"

She purses her lips, nodding and stifling tears in much the same way most of them are, "c-can I bring a stuffed animal?"

She tries not to wince, hating sounding so childish and hating the fact she's winding up for a  _ no _ . She knows they're not essential, it's a miracle Glenn even got half as many as he got between him leaving Atlanta and finding them; if she'd been with her dad she wouldn't have had any that's for sure. He hated the fact her mom spent money on them in the first place, Sophia's berated herself for causing some of her mom's bruises enough, all because she's weak and needs useless  _ things  _ to make her feel safe.

The worst pieces of her parents really come together in her, she realises. Her mom's weakness, her dad's violence. One would think they'd cancel each other out, but maybe one is just waiting to swallow the other.

"Of course you can," Rick nods, he doesn't make it obvious whether he's privy to what's going on in her head at that moment or not, but he runs a hand over her hair and angles her towards the tents, "you need someone to go with you?"

She pulls out her knife, shaking her head, "I'll be fine."

Or she normally would be. After everything Sophia drifts far more than she should, her legs working on muscle memory alone to weave her through the shreds of what could be considered their home; everything gone in the span of hours. 

She circles past the bodies of some of T-Dog’s friends, feeling numb at the sight of their mauled bodies; she crosses past Amy and Andrea’s old tent, crushed beneath the weight of downed walkers; she steps a foot next to the loose opening of her father’s tent-

A hand, bloody, dirty, familiar, grasps her ankle and a scream rips out of her by itself; the grip is strong, dying doing nothing but aiding her father’s ability to hurt her. Flashes, uncontrollable, violent flashes run through her mind as she’s tugged into the dirt and she sees his mangled face through streaming tears and louder wails. Even in death she can’t escape him, even after everything he finds a way to bring her down with him; she has her knife, she could stab him, she could run, but things always get worse when she runs, when she fights back - he’s the same, this situation is the same, it’ll end the same and then she’ll have, she’ll  _ be _ , nothing.

Something pierces the air, flying past her head, and the grip on her ankle goes slack. Someone shouts, Sophia’s still crying, but she scrambles to her feet and collides with someone else; they’re solid, they’re breathing, they’re warm, she doesn’t think nearly as hard as she should about wrapping her arms around their torso and muffling her sobbing into their side. 

They go rigid but she’s too wound up to care, tightening her grip as they move in her arms and whimpering around her tears.

“Yer alright, he ain’t gonna get ya. Not no more.”

It’s Daryl - she’s hugging  _ Daryl  _ for the first time in her  _ life _ \- his voice is stilted but soothing all the same; when she aims to pull away, to give him space like he prefers, his hand tangles in her hair and he holds her for just a second longer.

He lets her pull away so Glenn can scoop her up and walk them over to their tent with his arms securely around her. Things are packed in silence, a blanket is thrown over her shoulders, a stuffed bear pressed into her arms and a stuffed squirrel nestled into her bag amongst her clothes, her books, some water and a couple of cans of food.

With Merle gone she gets the backseat of the truck to herself, and while Glenn reclines the passenger seat back, Daryl stays awake, alert, and she reaches out to hold his hand before she even thinks of closing her eyes.

* * *

"Rise and shine."

Sophia awakens to a knock on the truck window, Jacqui smiles - strained and wet just like her voice - through the glass as Glenn startles himself awake with a choked snore. Daryl’s gone, presumably already helping with preparations for before the group leaves soon. 

She pulls on her mismatched sweater before she climbs out into camp, relishing in being wrapped up in the safety of the fabric. The morning air is crisp and the smell of the dew on the grass is almost stronger than the remains of death that still litter the ruins of camp. Almost.

Jim and Eliza stayed in the Morales family car by themselves last night, and they’re fairing even worse than they were before. When it was dark she could hardly see how their bites were affecting them, but in the light of the rising sun, the sweat dripping down Jim’s forehead from where he leans against the hood of the car shines clear even from where she stands. Eliza is still in the car, laid out on the backseat and breathing heavier than she should; the rag she’d had over her arm yesterday has been replaced by a new one, and as much as whoever swapped it tried to hide it, Sophia spies the cloth soaked dark red on the floor of the car.

Glenn must see her staring, because he reaches out and clasps her sleeved hand, tugging her away towards where Rick and the others have gathered around the firepit, the remains of their food not stolen by Shane’s escape or eaten by walkers being handed out for breakfast. 

Sophia gets a bowl of cold squirrel broth placed into her lap by Rick when she sits down, she offers him the best smile she can, and he offers his own back, neither of them feeling all that good but they’re alive, and Sophia supposes that’s all that really matters right now. Glenn chugs the meagre remains of a water bottle Amy tossed towards him and shoves a couple spoonfuls of beans into his mouth before passing the tin back across to Daryl.

They eat in silence, sitting closer together than they would on any normal day, and a few of them hyper-vigilant to any noise that comes from outside their circle of seven (aside from Jim and Eliza, doing the best they can with how they are). 

There’s a heavy energy, having their safety torn away so swiftly and so violently, having people they’d grown to care about taken from them in one way or another; she thinks even if they weren’t chasing after Shane and the people he took, they’d have left this camp anyway, whether they had a new destination or not.

When their quiet breakfast period begins to come to a close, Rick leaves the circle to dig through his things from where he’d slept with most of the others in T-Dog’s van last night, coming back and laying a map of the most immediate areas out in front of them. Glenn helps him flatten it into the ground with rocks on the corners, and as they set it up Rick pulls the lid of a sharpie off with his teeth and draws a circle around Atlanta, immediately crossing it out.

“We may be chasing the others,” he says, sticking the lid onto the back of the pen and looking at all of them, “but my top priority is keeping the rest of us as a group safe, if you know any places we should avoid, whether Shane has taken the others there or not, mark them out.” He holds the pen out and waits.

T-Dog reaches out first, crossing out a few of the closer towns to Atlanta; Amy scribbles out a few bigger roads she explains were close to being gridlocked when she and Andrea had gone through them, and Jacqui marks off a small area south of one T-Dog had crossed without much explanation. Sophia reaches out after a beat of nobody moving, swiftly putting a cross through Covington and tossing a look to Daryl who nods, chewing on the skin of his thumb as she hands the pen back to Rick.

“Alright, that narrows our path a bit,” he mumbles, tapping the pen to his chin before putting a box around King’s County, “I doubt Shane would take them back here, but it’s a viable option for us if we need a quieter place to stay for a short amount of time.”

“D’you think the others might split from him?” Amy asks, picking dust off her jeans and frowning.

Daryl scoffs, “only if they realise he lied, or he starts actin’ like a jackass, either one is likely.”

Amy’s frown deepens but she doesn’t argue, pulling at her lips with her teeth and bunching her shirt in her hands.

Rick shoots a look to Daryl who shrugs with a small glare, the former officer reaches out and lays a hand on Amy’s shoulder, “there’s a chance they might, I doubt Andrea or Lori went quietly, and with Dale, there’s someone level-headed with them, so they might split, they might not. We have to prepare for every scenario, and maybe if we find one or two of them away from the rest of the group they’ll have an idea of where the others are.”

Jacqui throws an arm over Amy’s shoulder and pulls the younger woman into her side, Sophia slides over from where she sits and lets Amy wrap an arm around her too. The others smile at them lightly, another soft moment to fill the morning with something other than grief; the three of them stay pressed together as the conversation continues, Amy pulling Sophia to sit between them instead of on the outside, cocooning her in warmth.

Rick opens the floor to them, leaning back as Carl curls himself under one of his arms, he ghosts his gaze over them again and doesn’t even have to verbally ask for ideas.

Jacqui shrugs, “I heard word people were coming up with a cure, any thoughts on the CDC?”

Glenn grimaces, his voice forlorn as he turns his eyes across the skyline of the city they might never return to, “we don’t wanna go anywhere near that place, last time I saw it nothing looked pretty.” Some of the others - though mostly Rick and Amy - look towards him (the latter frowning sympathetically) and he inhales heavily, closing his eyes, “I was only out that way for a couple days, and only at the start, seeing how much worse the city got after I left it… I doubt that place is any better.”

“Okay,” Rick nods, resting a hand on the boy’s shoulder and nodding, “so no CDC. Any other ideas.”

Amy raises a hand slowly, “Shane talked about going west a few times,” she bites her lip, “Fort Benning?”

Sophia knows that place isn’t exactly far by any normal means, but with all of them almost working on borrowed time and the roads more difficult to cross than usual, she imagines the trip would end up leading them through too many risk routes; judging by Rick’s face, he thinks similar.

“It fits, assuming Shane thinks it held and is wanting to keep them safe.”

“The man’s basically obsessed with Lori, I doubt he wants her dead,” T-Dog mutters, though evidently realising he wasn’t quiet enough by the hiss through his teeth and the apologetic look towards Rick, “sorry, man.”

The former officer raises his hand, lips pursed and smiling in that way people do when they’re put off by a situation but not the person bringing it up. He adjusts his hat and looks at Carl pressed into his side, “this that conversation we need to have?”

“Yeah,” Carl nods awkwardly. 

Rick exhales, squeezing the back of the boy’s neck and offering a slightly steadier smile, “we’ll have it in the car, go move your stuff.”

“Which one are we taking?”

There’s another pause, they haven’t fully discussed who’s using what yet besides the general understanding that Sophia, Glenn and Daryl get the Dixon truck until they’re at a point it’s smarter to leave it and take the bike. Sophia watches Rick scan the line of remaining vehicles, hand on Carl’s neck coming to rest in the boy’s hair as he runs whatever mental gymnastics he needs to come up with a semi-decent plan to get them out of here before the sun gets any higher.

“You and me can take the jeep,” he says finally, ruffling brown hair and nudging Carl to stand, “just until we think we don’t need it anymore.”

Daryl speaks up again after a while of watching them in his mulling silence, swapping the weight of his crossbow from one shoulder to the other and chewing away at more of the skin on his thumb, “Glenn, you and ‘Phia make sure you got everythin’ an’ get set back up in the truck.”

Glenn blinks from across the circle, “oh, okay.”

She escapes the warmth of Amy and Jacqui’s holds and crosses the circle, managing to steal a quick side hug from Daryl before dashing after Carl and making Glenn help him move things from T-Dog’s old van to the jeep down at the front of the car line. 

Clambering back into the truck when that’s handled, she double checks her stuff already packed and triple checks her backpack, knife, and bat to make sure everything is there and within easy reach. As she finishes her checks both Daryl and Glenn slide into the front seats, looking back at her until she nods and settles more solidly by the window to secure her seatbelt.

T-Dog pulls his van up beside the car and Sophia sees Amy and Jacqui talking in the windows and checking their things over. Rick leans through the front window to exchange a few words with T-Dog; when he’s done with that he turns and knocks on Daryl’s window.

He leans against the roof as it’s rolled down, “I’ll be leading up front, you encounter any problems or you see something, you use your horn to stop everyone.”

Daryl nods, “sure.”

With that, he leaves them and Daryl rolls his window back up, checking the mirrors and starting up the engine. Glancing out the window again, raking her eyes over the camp for the last time, Sophia watches Rick slip a gun into Jim’s hand, the two of them exchanging words she can’t hear but can guess; there’s a glance towards Eliza and her deteriorating state, and then they shake hands and Rick wanders back to the jeep.

She makes eye contact with Jim as the cars start forward, she offers the briefest of waves, blinking away the wetness in his eyes as he offers a final, tight smile and waves back. 

That’s the last she sees of either of them.

* * *

Being on the road after so many weeks in the same place gives her an unsettling sense of deja vu, the uncertainty that they’d ever find anywhere safe back when it was all just beginning, the risks taken entering certain places or driving at night just to keep them out of one place for too long. 

The truck has been through a lot with them, kept them out of harm’s way on more than one occasion, and done more for the Daryl long before she ever met him, so knowing they’ll have to leave it soon, take what remains of its fuel to keep the jeep, and any other car more useful than T-Dog’s van they find, going, Sophia doesn’t know what to think yet. 

(She’s barely come to terms with the fact she’ll never see Eliza or Jim again unless she somehow finds her way back up to that cursed quarry. She’s hardly come to terms with the fact her dad isn’t around anymore - and not in the same way as when she’d just been staying with Daryl or avoiding him at camp. He’s  _ gone _ . For good. There’s no need for her to let her paranoia convince her he’s about to slink out from the shadows of even the lightest room. He doesn’t exist anymore. That fact feels harder to swallow than anything else to her at this moment.)

She watches the roads pass by in a blur of colours; greens, browns, reds. The imposing silhouette of Atlanta gets smaller every time she looks back to find it; smaller in a different way than up in the quarry, she could still see it then, still connect to it and feel nearby, but as it gets smaller and the trees and long, scattered highways stretch further out into nothing, it disappears into the nothing behind. 

Her dad is gone, he meant nothing but fear and pain. What’s harder is letting go of any hope she may have had for her mom, soon the city - and that hope - will be nothing but a scribbled out blob on their map, a speck the might be able to see if she climbs the tallest tree or looks over the most open of cliffs. 

Today is the day she has to let her parents go, she’s an orphan now, probably always has been.

Somewhere along the way the vehicles on the road start to build up, Sophia snapping out of her thoughts when her eyes catch the first walker she’s seen since last night, strapped into the driver’s seat of a station wagon. 

The truck begins to slow, piquing her interest enough for her to shift to look out the front; they’ve weaved between a lorry that’s toppled onto its side and come to where the roadblock gets worse.

There in the road is the RV, doors open and completely abandoned.

“Shit,” Daryl mutters.

The three of them climb out of the truck as the others leave the van; they all gather in a cluster beside Rick and the jeep where Carl still sits.

“They ditched it,” Amy says, eyebrows knitting together as she cranes her neck to look around the area, “there’s so much stuff here and they left?”

Carl stands on the seat of the jeep and leans on the outer framing, resting his chin on his arms, “maybe something happened.”

“Maybe,” Rick hums.

He holds out his arm for a moment, gesturing with a flick of his wrist for Daryl to follow; the pair of them pull their knives from their belts and inch towards the RV, Rick picking up a stray shoe from the side of the road and tossing it loudly into the doorway. Nothing moves, not inside, not around, Daryl steps into the vehicle with his knife raised and within a second he’s sticking his head out and shaking his head.

“It’s clear.”

The rest of them fumble forwards, crowding the abandoned remains of their home and looking it over, Glenn circles around to the front and hisses, a small puff of white smoke bursting into the air.

“Hose stopped them, Dale was saying it was on its way out back at camp.”

“So, what?” T-Dog asks, “the hose goes out and they all go looking for something to fix it?”

Jacqui folds her arms, “there’s only four of them, with this amount of ground to cover I’d want everyone out too.”

Rick starts back towards the jeep, talking at them over his shoulder as he reaches into the back of the car and pulls out the gun bag, “besides, Shane and Dale are the only ones with any gun training,” he states, “would’ve wanted to keep them together, safer.”

Amy tears at the skin of her lip, “should we look around?”

He gives her a slight half nod, a little tilt of his head as he drops the bag onto the hood of the jeep and unzips it. He glances over his shoulder and whispers a count of them, though he only pulls out the one rifle with the scope they still have - found by Jacqui in the dust around the opening to camp, either dropped or taken from Dale. Sophia watches him flip the weight in his hands and hold the scope to his eye to spy back down the road they came, he nods to himself then turns to Amy, taking a step towards her and holding the rifle out; Amy stares.

“I don’t want you to fire this,  _ at all _ ,” he says, looking her right in the eye, “but I need someone steady up on that roof and keeping an eye out for us. You see anything, them, a walker, a group, anythin’, you either say something to the closest person to you or you call for me, understand?”

Amy sucks in a breath, maintaining that serious eye-contact with doe-eyes of her own until she nods, he offers her something of a smile and walks her through the general way to hold the rifle and look through the scope properly. He reiterates that, under no circumstances besides the absolute end of the rest of the world, should she fire the gun, and when she nods again he pushes her towards the ladder of the RV and sends her up.

He then turns to look back at the rest of them, “the rest of you keep what silent weapons you have, when I’m more sure of where you stand in terms of skill, or we’re in a situation we don’t get a choice again, you’ll get a gun.” 

Everyone else seems to be fine with it, even when Rick looks towards Daryl and offers one of the handguns - because even with one they all know Daryl will favour his crossbow any day. They’re then directed to grab what they need from their cars and get looking for anything useful: food, water, clothes for the impending colder weather, whatever might be good.

So, Sophia follows Daryl and Glenn back to the truck to snag her backpack and bat, tugging off her mismatched sweater in place of the windbreaker she’s more okay with getting dirty. She shoves the bright fabric into her bag and goes to swing it over her shoulders, but Daryl taps her arm and nods towards the hood of the truck.

“You okay?” She asks, squeezing Glenn’s hand as he walks past to go wander around with Jacqui.

Daryl snorts, hooking his hands under her arms and hoisting her onto the hood, laying her backpack beside her, “y’gotta stop askin’ me that.”

She finds herself giggling, just a little, tugging her windbreaker closer to herself as she watches him look through a pile of old belts and holsters she’s not seen him with before, “I ask cause you never want me to. What are we doing?”

He rolls his eyes, “sortin’ y’out s’ya can stop traipsin’ around w’th yer knife in yer damn waistband, or this thing,” he lifts the end of the bat in her hands, “in yer hands constantly.”

“Where’d you get all this stuff?”

“Some o’ my old shit I found wh’n movin’ a couple years back… lil’ after I met ya.”

She bites her lip to keep from smiling so wide, keeping most of her focus on not letting her feet swing back and forth off the edge of the hood. He picks out one of the belts - not the smallest but not the biggest - and looks her over, checking the length of it around her waist and the size of the holster against her leg.

He shrugs, “should keep ya goin’ fer a few years.” 

Then she watches him lay the leather against the truck and cut into it with his hunting knife, piercing a rough hole at one part, and trimming down the end of the belt itself and the straps of the holster - enough is left that as she grows they won’t have to find another one, which is good, and also optimistic in Daryl terms. 

When he’s finished he tucks it through the loops on her jeans and checks that the new hole is in the right place for it to feel tight enough. He makes sure the holster wraps securely around her leg as well before looping the excess of both loops under the fastened straps to keep them out of the way.

He steals the bat out of her hands, and moves out of the way to let her slide back onto solid ground, “feel alright?”

She twists a couple of times, jumps a few more, and nods, “feels good.”

He nods back, watching her as she takes her knife from it’s old spot and unflips it to slip it into the holster where it fits comfortably; now in a position less awkward for her to reach for. When she looks back to Daryl, he’s looking at the elastic bottle holder on the side of her bag, empty at the moment, and a good thing too because the next thing he decides to take his knife to is the bottom of that, leaving only the top loop of elastic.

“What’s that for?”

“This,” he says, holding up her bat and slips it in with the handle facing the ground, “have t’ get used to pullin’ it out, but keeps yer hands free when ya need ‘em.”

“Huh.” She takes the bag when he hands it back over and slips it onto her shoulders, “thanks.”

The corner of Daryl’s lip quirks upwards and he reaches out to ruffle her hair a little, “was hopin’ we’d have more time to find somethin’ proper but,” he trails off, shrugging.

But there hasn’t been much time, she knows, and now with everyone they’re looking for missing from their only lead… they’re working on even less time.

He sends her off to see Rick by the front of the RV, just while he puts all his stuff away. She finds him talking with Carl and catches the tail-end of something about them talking more about the  _ mom and Shane thing _ when either one of them is there to explain themselves. She spies him fiddling with his ring when Carl hears her approaching, mouth falling open when he sees her with the belt and holster.

“Woah, cool!” he exclaims, spinning to look up at his dad, “can I get one of those?”

Rick chuckles, looking between his son and Daryl, “well that’s up to Daryl, isn’t it?”

Carl turns, a hopeful gleam in his eye that seems to almost immediately cuts through Daryl; he rolls his eyes, jutting his head toward the truck hood and shooting a glare towards Glenn when he catches him grinning.

“Well,” Rick smiles, nodding at Daryl before turning to look down at her, “you wanna help me look for stuff?”

She smiles, “yes, sir.”

He ruffles her hair even softer than Daryl did and they set off away from the RV (with a final check to make sure Amy’s okay) and a little further down from where T-Dog, Jacqui, and Glenn are exploring. 

Part of her wants to ask how his conversation with Carl went, mostly because Carl didn’t seem too upset or like he’d been ignored, but also because Rick has that similar expression Carl had that day he talked to her about it - like he’d had some thoughts about it already and felt like he should know what to make of it by now. 

That second thing is mostly what holds her back, because if she knows anything about Rick from the few days he’s been around, it’s that he’s not going to want to bother someone with his problems when there are other (arguably, to him, bigger) things going on that need his attention; he’s also not likely to let a kid know how he’s feeling.

Maybe she can ask Daryl to check? Glenn might work better though, emotional availability and all. Amy could be good too, her and Rick seem to get along and she’s older than Glenn so Rick might not feel like he’s bogging down someone he shouldn’t be. 

“Something on your mind?” Rick’s voice breaks her from her thoughts, the two having come to a stop between a few cars and a larger van.

“Just… worried about the others,” she says, avoiding his eyes by looking through the closest open car.

She doesn’t know what face he makes, if he frowns softly or purses his lips and nods to himself, either one feels like something he would do, and she tries to keep her focus on the suitcase she’s fumbled her way into looking through.

He comes up beside her and reaches further through the open trunk to shuffle through a duffle bag, keeping his words soft, but neutral when it comes to whether he actually believes them or not.

“Shane can take care of them, they’re a smaller group it’ll be harder to lose anybody, and Dale always finds a way to keep a level head,” he pauses, mulling over his next few words as he pushes aside bundles of useless items in the bag, “Lori won’t let them go very far without Carl, and I doubt Andrea wants to go anywhere without Amy either. We’ll find them.”

She hums, pushing aside the suitcase with the only helpful things she finds being a box of unopened toothpaste and a lighter; she hands the latter to Rick who stares at it for a moment before shoving it into his back pocket. 

They dig through a few more of the closer cars, finding more food, some water; Rick empties out that duffel bag he was looking through to throw everything they find, including a few coats he reminds her will be good for winter.

(And the thought of winter isn’t something she’s considered yet. It’s strange, really, this whole thing is almost in its second month but up until now there’s still been some vague hope of it coming to a close… or at least things becoming more normal. But winter is going to be cold, winter they’ll probably still be out here, on the road or in the woods, and they’re going to have to figure out how to stay warm and still stay safe away from the walkers. She wonders if how the cold will affect them, what cold walkers mean for the group.) 

“Hey, dad!” Carl’s voice echoes across the highway, “we found something!”

She and Rick turn to look, finding him waving at them from over by the barrier blocking the decline into the woods, Daryl’s crouched in the brush, and looking at something in the dirt. Rick swings the bag over his shoulder as they head over, dropping it by the bank once they get over and stepping over the railing to squat beside Daryl.

“What’s up?”

Carl slides down the hill a little, catching himself on his dad’s shoulder as Sophia comes up beside Daryl, “we found this caught on that bush.” He points to a twiggy little thing tangled around a tree, holding out something wrapped in purple tissue paper.

Rick’s eyebrows knit together, taking the item and carefully unwrapping it to find a necklace with a mermaid charm, “oh…” he wraps it back up quickly and stashes it in his closest pocket, throwing a look back to where Amy is, “Andrea had it.”

Daryl exhales, “well, makes this easier to understand then.”

They look down at where he’s pointing, Rick and Carl probably can’t see as much as Sophia can, and Sophia knows for a fact she can’t see as much as Daryl does, but the earth’s been shifted and moved, the beginnings of a trail.

“Looks like some struggle,” he says, tracing a finger over some of the upturned roots and pebbles once buried beneath the soil, “guys prolly went lookin’ fer shit ‘round here, wife o’ yers went t’ take off, Blondie chased after her… somethin’ happened here,” he points further down to where the tree and bush are, where the necklace was found, “one o’ the guys came to help, my guess is that old man, one of ‘em headed that way,” he gestures towards the expanse of woodland before them, imposing and who-knows how big, “an’ the others followed.”

Carl’s mouth drops open, eyes shimmering with admiration and shock, “you can tell all that from the footprints?”

“Footprints an’ what I know of ‘em,” Daryl shrugs one shoulder, chewing at his thumb again and avoiding looking at Carl. 

Rick shifts his weight, picking up a stick from the ground and twisting it in his hands, “how far can you track them?”

“However long the trail goes,” Daryl ghosts a look back at the rest of the highway where the others are, if Sophia looks hard enough she can find Glenn looking over at them from some water van, “better if it's just you, me, ‘n Glenn. Faster that way.”

Rick inhales slowly, nodding and snapping the twig in his hand as he pushes himself to stand. The four of them cross back over the barrier and Rick brings his fingers to his lips to whistle out for the others and bring them over, signalling for Amy to come down from the top of the RV as they get back. Carl settles in his place beside Sophia, their hands coming together as they stand amongst this group of adults, not quite out of their depth, but not able to keep themselves afloat without someone else yet.

“What’d Carl find?” Glenn asks, pulling his hat off to run his hand through his hair.

Rick produces the purple package relatively quickly, extending his arm out to Amy, who stares at him with that same wide-eyed expression she had when he held the rifle - now settled quite comfortably against her back - out to her earlier.

“Andrea had this,” he states, letting Amy take it at her own pace, “she’d picked it up in Atlanta for you. It’s your birthday today, isn’t it?”

Amy sucks in a breath, as if only just remembering herself. She blinks, nodding, “yeah, I’m- um- I’m twenty-four.” She takes a second to stare at the coloured paper, pulling it open so gently, and caressing the mermaid charm with her thumb when her eyes, growing wetter by the moment, come upon it, “she dropped this?”

“Looks like it,” Daryl mumbles, shifting the weight of his crossbow and offering his best reassuring expression, “there’s a trail I can track but most o’ y’all gotta stay here.”

T-Dog eyes him sceptically, “and let you wander your ass into the woods by yourself?”

Rick raises his arm placatingly when Daryl’s arms stiffen, “it’s safer this way, we’d all be fumbling over ourselves if we went out there together. Daryl just wants me and Glenn, so I need you to stay and keep watch, take care of each other.”

“How far are we gonna go?” Glenn pipes up, not even fighting back against, once again, getting volunteered for something he’s had no say in.

“As far as we can ‘fore it starts to get dark,” Daryl says, the pair exchanging words with their eyes before Glenn nods and wanders over to the truck to get his jacket.

“What do you need us to do here?” Jacqui asks, her hand against Amy’s shoulder as the blonde wipes at her eyes.

Rick looks at them, sparing the briefest of smiles when he glances at Sophia and Carl, “keep gathering supplies, load what you can into the RV so it’s safe. We need you guys here in case the others circle back and end up here before we do. You spot a walker, you either take them out quietly or you hide and wait for them to pass. Don’t take any unnecessary risks.”

“You guys don’t take any either,” Amy tells them, giving a final swipe at her eyes and scrunching the tissue paper into her back pocket as Jacqui helps her clasp the necklace around her neck. She looks at Rick, eyes a tint of pink but with a fire burning in them, “if you get the chance, you punch Shane in the face for me, okay?”

Rick - everyone really - chuckles at that, holding out his hand and meeting her solid gaze, “I’ll teach you some tricks, you can do it yourself.”

There’s a smile, then the two are shaking hands, “I’ll hold you to that.”

Glenn wanders back over as the exchange concludes, running his hands down his face and aiming his attention down at Sophia (and subsequently Carl) with knitted eyebrows and a gentle frown.

Jacqui reaches out to brush her fingers against his arm, catching his attention with the warmest of her smiles, “we’ll take care of the kids, honey, don’t you worry.”

With that, Amy heads back atop the RV, and the three men take off to leave. They stand and watch as the trio step over the barrier and follow the trail of their lost friends, watch until they’re lost to the woods themselves and Sophia gets that sinking feeling in her stomach she’d gotten when they’d planned to leave for Merle in Atlanta.

(Perhaps part of her knew, somehow, something bad would happen to camp. Perhaps her natural need to be near either Daryl or Glenn had been the one thing to save her that day, because who knows which group she’d be in now if she’d stayed… out in the woods with Shane or like her dad. Perhaps she should have argued more, to tag along when both Daryl and Glenn planned to take off, because perhaps she knew then, in that moment, things couldn’t stay calm for long.)

The four of them hunting through the cars take a moment to themselves before they plan to start looking again. It’s in this moment that Carl finds her, twisting another flower - a purple anemone - between his fingers and chewing the inside of his cheek.

“I haven’t given you anything since camp,” he mumbles, “you left your book open once, it said these flowers mean protection from evil, so, I wanted to give it to you.” 

He thrusts it out, still somehow as shy as before, and she smiles - trying to ignore Amy cooing from above them, and Jacqui and T-Dog mumbling to themselves at their side - plucking it from his fingers.

“Thanks, remember to find one for yourself too.” She tucks the stem into the holster with her knife, she can stick it into her journal later.

From there it’s decided T-Dog and Carl will look around ( _ “C’mon little man, we gotta find the best stash before they can” _ ), and Sophia gets to search with Jacqui ( _ “Let’s go show them what girls are made of, sweetie.” _ ). They split off into their pairs with a bit of friendly competition - of course, refereed by Amy - boosting the winds of their sails.

Sophia and Jacqui head up the road in the direction they should continue driving soon. A bit of light teasing ( _ “So he gives you flowers? _ ”), a heaping load of red faces ( _ “Stop it-” _ ), and a few duffles of winter clothes and food dropped underneath the shade of the RV overhang later, Sophia spies something off the side of the road.

“Hey, what’s that?”

Jacqui looks over, following her pointed arm to the stretch of flattened plants off into the bank beside the road again; they’re further up the road, still under the watchful gaze of Amy, but far enough away that she might have to really shout to get their attention. They’ll trail back in a minute, Sophia’s just curious.

She and Jacqui jump the barrier, taking the walk down the incline slowly until they find solid ground in the thing pressed between the bushes and the plants. They crouch down, brushing away stray leaves and sticks, and Jacqui gives a curious hum when they uncover it properly.

“It’s a road sign.”

Sophia frowns, “how’d it fall over?”

“I don’t know, sweetie,” Jacqui shrugs, “but it does say there’s a town a few miles up the road.”

She perks up, a town, not a city, probably not as badly overrun if overrun at all. They could head there, find a place to bunker down, maybe Shane and the others have found their way up there too, looting the buildings for supplies and setting up somewhere nearby the rest of the group could find them.

“D’you think it’ll still have stuff in it?”

“There’s always a little hope, isn’t there.”

Sophia smiles. Then, she looks up, it’s on a whim, an instinct, because her ears pick up something and she doesn’t quite realise until Amy’s waving her arms in their direction and flattening herself to the RV roof. She can’t see Carl or T-Dog, doesn’t think they’re anywhere near them, but she sees heads -  _ multiple _ \- peeking over the roofs of the cars.

“Jacqui…” her voice dies in her throat, the sheer amount of walkers now in her sightlines (the amount of walkers that can see  _ them _ ) is enough to steal any courage that might have built up over the course of the day.

Jacqui looks where she is and has to fight back her own gasp. They both realise their only way out and away is through the woods, the woods they’ve never been in before and the woods their friends might still be lost in. Sophia feels a hand clasp around her arm, pulling her up and further down the incline, only letting go when their ground is flat beneath their feet and they can choose a direction to run.

They’ll circle back. They’ll be _fine_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For all things interacting with me and my other online spaces: My Carrd :]
> 
> (Btw if this link doesn't work you can find my carrd pinned on my twitter @_solarheart_)


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